


Soft Heart, Electric Souls

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Consent Issues, Dom Tony Stark, Established Relationship, Hurt Wanda Maximoff, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Tony Stark, Sub Bucky Barnes, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Villain Redemption, but i hope yalls like it, i dunno bois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-05-31 15:12:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15122138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Bucky kneels next to Tony’s desk chair, leaning into his leg as Tony runs his fingers through his long hair and wonders if maybe he should get it cut. Tony likes it long but it should probably be trimmed anyways, if Bucky is fine with that. Most of the time he doesn’t say much but Tony figures that’s normal after all he’s been through.*Wanda watches without much pity as the building burns in front of her. This isn’t the last of the people responsible for her family's deaths either, but she suspects Stark will react the same way the others did because they’re all cowards in the end.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok- first order of business this does have a lot of Wanda in it. This is designed to set her up as the villain and give her a redemption arc (unlike AoU _cough_ ). But I know a lot of people don't care for her (I personally think she has potential) so I thought I'd make it clear that a lot of this story is about her.
> 
> I'd also like to make it clear that I changed a LOT of her fucking senseless backstory. For one Tony is not the only one she's killed to avenge her parents (as noted in the synopsis), and she never joins HYDRA because what the literal ass? She does still have her powers, though how that is will be explained in text so you'll get there eventually. Basically I set her up to feel less like a character used as a plot device and more like Magneto. Because you know, he is her father in the comics. She's not _exactly_ like that obviously, but she's supposed to have more of that feel than whatever the fuck Whedon thought we'd buy.
> 
> Order of Business Two- there's a lot of consent issues in this mostly to do with Wanda and her mind manipulations (they happen a lot, be warned!), but there's also some minor consent issues with Bucky/ Tony mostly in Bucky's intentions behind starting a relationship with Tony to begin with. They will be acknowledged so if you pick up on them its an entire plot point in here, no worries. Point is that there will be a lot of consent issues going forward. The mind stuff is canon typical though. Like Charles Xavier, but you know, more villainous.
> 
> Also I forgot to mention when I posted this right away- Wanda is younger than I think she is in canon (which I think is somewhere between19 and 26? Her age is ambiguous). Anyways she's 17, almost 18, in this.

Bucky kneels next to Tony’s desk chair, leaning into Tony's leg as he runs his fingers through Bucky’s long hair and wonders if maybe he should get it cut. Tony likes it long but it should probably be trimmed anyways, if Bucky is fine with that. Most of the time he doesn’t say much but Tony figures that’s normal after all he’s been through. Today though he’s tenser than usual so Tony curls his hand around the back of his neck, squeezing just a little. Its not something he’d think would help Bucky given his past but it works like a charm every time Bucky if having a difficult time relaxing. “Is something wrong?” he murmurs softly.

Bucky doesn’t respond right away and Tony doesn’t expect him to either, it takes him time to think and he’s long ago learned to accept that. Eventually he lets out a soft sigh though, “Steve is being more clingy than usual,” he murmurs. That’s not exactly unusual either and Tony has an unfortunate amount of knowledge on how far Steve will go in order to keep Bucky safe.

When he found out about his parents that’s not what he was looking for. He’d been digging up information that he was certain correlated with some project in his dad’s files that SHIELD had reluctantly handed over before things went tits up but what he found instead was the Winter Solider. At the time he didn’t realize that was Bucky, but he had figured out his parents were murdered. Then everything in DC went down and Natasha eventually showed up on his doorstep.

By then he’d mostly processed the murder bit, but when he figured out it was _Bucky_ he’d been extra pissed at least until he went digging through Natasha’s dumped HYDRA files that included a lot more information than what he had before. When he asked Natasha for confirmation on Bucky’s status as the Winter Soldier she confirmed his suspicions and at the time he didn’t even think to ask Steve. Later, quite a few months later, he eventually realized that Steve never actually told him about Bucky and by then they’d found him and brought him in. So he waited and it’s been almost a year since then but he still hasn’t said anything.

Tony thinks its because Bucky has a stable life right now- on his dime- and he understands objectively why Steve made the choice he did. But morally that’s just… unforgivable. He’s tried to consider Steve’s moral reasoning behind this, wondered if he’d to the same if it were Rhodey but his answer is the same every time. If Rhodey were in Bucky’s position he’d already have the moral high ground- the shit Bucky has been through is horrible. No one, if they were given an explanation, could possibly hold him responsible for his actions harsh as they were. So if he were in Steve’s place he would have told him what happened if for no other reason than not wanting it to be a nasty surprise later.

He can’t imagine anyone would react well to ‘surprise, your parents were murdered!’ But especially not if they also discovered they’re bankrolling said murderer however harrowing his circumstances might have been. Rhodey thinks he’s too forgiving but maybe that’s because he’d looked up to Steve until Tony let that piece of information slip. Tony has already been let down by most of his heroes in life so really this hadn’t been a shock to him so much as just another circumstance of his bad judgment in character.

“You can tell him you need space, you know,” Tony tells Bucky. It’d give them breathing room too. Bucky hadn’t been wrong when he pointed out that Steve would react badly to their relationship and if Bucky wants to avoid that, well, Tony has his own reasons for avoiding Steve these days.

“I don’t know if he’d listen if I did,” Bucky says and Tony sighs.

“Then tell him more firmly. You’re a grown ass adult and you managed to survive just fine for over a year without us interfering- clearly you’re capable of caring for yourself,” he says. Bucky doesn’t respond, not verbally anyways. He starts to shake a little, on the verge of panic Tony knows because this isn’t the first time this has happened. That and he has experience with panic attacks on his own as well.

He spins in his chair a little to face Bucky properly and he carefully moves Bucky’s hair away from his face, giving him a little room to breathe. “Hey,” he says softly, “deep breaths.” Bucky complies easily enough, breathing shaky but happening and Tony murmurs encouragement that he probably won’t remember once Bucky is stable again. If this were a normal relationship he’d just talk to Steve himself but Bucky made it clear that he would want to be the one to tell Steve about them and he’s not going to take that away just because Bucky doesn’t know how to talk to Steve himself. Tony doesn’t like it- Steve seems to cause Bucky a lot of stress, but it’s also not his place to say anything either way. Bucky has had enough taken away from him, he’s not going to take that away his choice in how and when Steve finds out about their relationship. Or his chance to ask Steve to back off.

It takes several moments but Bucky calms some. He’s still shaking a little but his breathing is mostly steady when he leans in and presses his face to Tony’s stomach. He runs his fingers through Bucky’s think hair again in an effort to further relax him. “You wanna go lay down?” he asks softly. Bucky needs the extra contact, Tony can feel it, so when he nods he’s grateful for it. “Okay,” he murmurs, “up you get. JARVIS, make sure Steve stays out of our way,” he tells the AI. He’s gotten good at keeping Steve away from Bucky when needed and he’s made a lot of progress on subtlety too. Tony is impressed with the AI’s ability to learn considering Tony intentionally made him blunt.

Tony stands, extending his hand to Bucky, who takes it and stands carefully, eyes cast towards the ground. It’s not a habit Tony likes, but its so ingrained in Bucky’s behavior that he wouldn’t even know where to start in terms of stopping it. And at the moment Bucky is way too fragile to try anyways- any kind of negative feedback and he’d crumble. He wouldn’t have thought he’d be good with such a fragile personality but truthfully he actually likes the challenge.

Bucky stretches the limits of what he’s capable of and that’s part of what Tony likes about him. He’s always liked being pushed forward in new ways and Bucky certainly meets that requirement. Beyond that he likes Bucky when he chooses to come out of his shell a little. He’s disastrously shy but when that goes away he’s pretty funny if a little strange. It’d be nice to see more of that but Tony has done his research- abused subs take time and given the time Bucky grew up in plus the extent of his abuse, well, he figures it’ll take ten times longer than the average sub to come back to himself.

*

Before when Bucky felt that familiar clawing at his throat, that restriction that seemed to seize his heart, lungs, and airways at the same time he’d just turn off. Functioning on autopilot is something he has mastered and thanks to the extensive skillset he gained in HYDRA functioning has become easy in the barest sense of the word. Anything beyond that, though, and he doesn’t know what to do or how to do it. A world without the strict structure of HYDRA is a world of endless possibilities and Bucky doesn’t want that, can’t _handle_ that without his brain turning off. He’s been told he managed to hide from Steve and the rest of the Avengers for almost a year. He has no recollection of any of that, or even why he’d choose to run. Looking back that seems like a stupid choice now but maybe that’s because he has Tony.

He also happened to be the one who found him- Tony and Natasha. He explained how- something about watching the way he disappeared and reappeared and finding a pattern but Bucky knows that can’t be right. He’s been taught not to work in patterns and he doesn’t so whatever Tony found it’s not something anyone else would have ever would have noticed. But Bucky remembers when Tony found him well. He’d been hiding in some rat hole apartment and Tony knocked on the door. Its not like it had been the first time he’d seen Tony and his scent is distinct- he knew who it was right away but he didn’t smell the usual accompaniment of metal that follows Tony around like a lost dog. He stood there for some time before he finally crept towards the door.

When he looked out the peephole Tony had been wearing jeans, a soft looking AC/DC shirt, and a leather jacket. A quick glance showed he had no weapons, or at least none that Bucky could pick out easily, and that made him curious. He hadn’t opened the door obviously but Tony must have heard him move because he’d laughed softly. “All this time we’ve spent chasing you around and all we had to do was knock? Go figure,” he’d murmured softly. He remembers liking the sound of Tony’s voice, or maybe that’s just what he tells himself now that he’s actually fond of Tony as a person. But there was something in his approach that made Bucky open the door that day, and whatever it was he let Tony take him back to Avengers tower.

Life after that has been more difficult than life on the run mostly because everyone around him walks on eggshells. He hates being treated like glass, doesn’t know how to explain that, and the tendency for everyone- but especially Steve- to get nervous trying to tell him to do or not do something leaves him panicky. The only person who doesn’t walk on eggshells around him is Tony, who takes charge naturally and has no problem telling Bucky what to do. He knows that’s what draws him to Tony in a more… permanent way. Everyone else works probably too hard on not telling him what to do, or trying to avoid getting in the way of his decision making but he doesn’t even know _how_ to make choices, and there are always so many of them to make. Its just easier if someone else does it. Too many choices brings back that squeezing in his lungs and heart and his vision will fuzz as his airways constrict. It’s hard to function like that.

Tony makes things easier because he’s a natural leader- he supposes all Doms are, and if Bucky is around he’ll give him something to do. When he started showing up in Tony’s lab Tony would give him tasks to do- things he usually delegated out to his bots but apparently he’s better at differentiating wrench types. Things progressed from there he supposes and now he prefers Tony’s company, the structure of it. It feels safe, comforting, to know that Tony will give him what he needs when he needs it.

When they get to Tony’s room he strips off his jacket and hands it to Bucky, a silent command he’s used to by now. So is Tony considering the unconscious nature of the action is any indication. Bucky doesn’t mind as he plods off into Tony’s massive closet and places the jacket where it’s supposed to go before returning. Tony hands off his tie and he does the same thing, wondering how Tony ever got into the habit of wearing a suit in the lab anyways. It doesn’t happen all the time but it happens often enough that he wonders how Tony’s suits never seem to get ruined.

After putting the tie in its proper place- Tony’s wardrobe is surprisingly organized for a guy that’s such a disaster- he returns to find Tony has untucked his shirt and he’s undone the first couple buttons near the collar. The less formal, slightly unkempt look works for him in a way Bucky is jealous of. If he tried that he’d look ridiculous where Tony looks a little rebellious. “You okay?” he asks softly, reaching out and placing a hand on Bucky’s hip. He closes his eyes, focuses on the point of contact and Tony’s warm hand before he nods. “Good,” Tony murmurs softly- he always speaks softly to Bucky. “Alright, take your shirt off and get on the bed, face down,” he tells him. His voice remains soft but there’s something else to it now, an undercurrent of command there that Bucky is more than happy to follow.

He strips off his shirt, folding it gently before climbing onto the bed and stretching himself out. He slides his hands under one of Tony’s pillows- the one he’s decided is his- and smiles a little. Tony shuffles around before he kneels by the side of the bed, on Bucky’s level. “Are you okay?” he asks, checking in again. He’s consistent with this kind of thing. Bucky nods to him and Tony smiles a little, reaching out and brushing some hair out of his partially exposed face. “You sure?” he asks and Bucky nods again. Tony runs his fingers through Bucky’s long strands of hair, trailing his fingers down Bucky’s neck and shoulder as he does. “Good,” he murmurs. “You’re always so good for me.” Bucky can’t help but smile at that too, pleased that he’s pleased Tony. Not something he’d expect he’d react to but he wouldn’t have expected himself to react to Tony’s hand on the back of his neck either, not with his usual memories of that action. Its something about Tony, he’s sure.

Tony stands up then and Bucky listens to him move. With his hearing its not that hard, especially considering Tony isn’t quiet to begin with. He takes his time with whatever it is he’s doing and eventually Bucky lifts his head, looking to see what Tony is doing. He’s got his phone in his hand and when he notices Bucky looking he smiles a little, corners of his lips pulling up in a slight smirk. “Patience is a virtue, Barnes,” he says in a teasing tone. Bucky rolls his eyes and settles back into his pillow, waiting for Tony. He still takes forever to finally come back over to him, settling his hand on Bucky’s back for a moment and he lets out a happy, almost inaudible, sigh. Tony’s touch is grounding and pleasant and Bucky lets himself relax into it as Tony climbs onto the bed.

He runs his hand up Bucky’s back, avoiding his metal arm and shoulder thankfully, before swinging a leg over his side and perching himself on Bucky’s butt. What little tension remained in his body falls away because this is familiar; he knows what’s coming. Tony carefully kneads at the muscles in his back and Bucky concentrates on the movement, noting the way his hands move on his body. He wonders if Tony took lessons or something- it feels like he has though he has not idea why Tony of all people would go out of his way to learn how to properly massage someone. If anyone is going to get pampered he’d think that would be Tony and maybe that’s why he enjoys moments like these so much- he almost feels like he’s getting away with something.

Tony could have anyone, do anything, he wants and yet he chooses to be here with Bucky, carefully working over his muscles with his hands. “Bucky,” Tony murmurs, shaking him out of his mental fog a little. “Shh, you’re alright,” Tony tells him softly, “you’re close to the edge though, I can feel it. Can you go over though, do that for me?” he asks. He presses his forehead to Bucky’s shoulder briefly before pressing a soft, barely there kiss to his shoulder. He doesn’t know why but that’s what does it for him and he falls softly into subspace.

*

It was selfish and probably pretty stupid on Tony’s part but Bucky was hovering there anyways and he’s always been a little too curious for his own good so he coaxed Bucky into subspace. He didn’t expect him to stay there long, not with his history, but when he has to work to coax him out of it hours later Bucky blinks in surprise before frowning. “You could have left me there longer,” he murmurs, saying more than he usually does in a day all in one go. Maybe it hadn’t been so stupid a decision.

“You’ve been down for hours, Buck. Steve’s starting to wonder where you went.” He started getting nervous an hour ago and at the moment he’s next to prepared to call the cops not that they’d be in any way useful to the situation even if Bucky really were missing.

Bucky lets out a soft noise before dropping his head back to Tony’s chest. “Still could have left me there longer. Steve can suffer,” he mumbles.

Yeah, in general Tony would agree but at the moment less so. “How long has it been since…” he trails off, knowing Bucky knows what he’s talking about and he’s not entirely sure he wants the answer.

“Since… the war, I guess,” he says.

Tony’s brows draw together because that _can’t_ be right. “You haven’t been in subspace since _World War Two_?” he asks, just to clarify.

“Not willingly,” Bucky murmurs like that’s a perfectly normal thing to disclose and that just breaks Tony’s heart.

He considers that information for a moment before he speaks again. “You…I… I didn’t cross a line, did I?” he asks, not entirely sure Bucky would say something if he did. But he might if prompted to. It’s why Tony makes the time to check in with Bucky often when they’re together. He knows Bucky has had an awful history and he’s not looking to further that trauma.

Bucky lifts his head then, briefly making eye contact with Tony before looking away again but the fact that he managed for any length of time is impressive in its own right. “No. I think I needed that,” he says. “Should probably do it again soon.” He lays his head back on Bucky’s chest and Tony relaxes a little, happy that he didn’t accidentally screw Bucky up more.

“Okay,” he says softly, running his fingers down Bucky’s arm. “But uh, you should probably reappear to Steve before he actually calls the police, he’s worried.” Not something Tony really cares about on a personal level, but he does care on a more practical ‘I don’t want to get busted’ level.

He smiles when Bucky lets out an annoyed noise both because he finds it funny and also because it’s nice to hear Bucky expressing actual opinions and emotions. “Fine,” he mumbles. “But we can do this again right, soon?” he asks, looking almost back up at Tony again but he still skirts the eye contact last minute. Tony presses a soft kiss to his temple.

“Yeah Bucky, just let me know,” he murmurs.

*

Wanda watches without much pity as the building burns in front of her. She’s freed most of the people in it save for a few who deserve worse than the fiery death that they’re getting. That’s what you get, she thinks to herself, when you drop a bomb on the wrong person’s family. On a whole _city_ of the wrong people but she’s not here looking for revenge for everyone who died that day, just her family. This is the last of the people responsible in Sokovia and its taken time to track them all down though her newfound power makes it easier. No need to attempt intimidation, something that’s difficult at her age, when she can just ask the questions and pluck the answers straight out of their heads.

Behind her people run, a few scream, and others are trying to pull their loved ones away but she just stands there and watches the same way these people did when they killed her family. When they went after her entire _country_ afterwards.

Its funny that they seemed to want to watch the world burn until they were begging her not to set _their_ world on fire. This isn’t the last of them either, but she suspects Stark will react the same way because they’re all cowards in the end.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Wanda's mental manipulations and some real sad shit at the end related to mental health problems.

Wanda is thankful for her ability to alter minds and perceptions because if it weren’t for her talent in manipulation she never would have landed in the U.S. The security was tougher than she expected but a little mind magic and she was on her way easily enough. First on her list of things to do had been housing- which she also acquired via mind magic, then she needed supplies- acquired the same way, and time is something she already had. Once she gathered everything she needed she began surveillance.

That’s easier, with her abilities, and she spends most of her time in the couple Starbucks close enough to the Tower that she can listen in on the usual happenings of the people in the top floors. She makes notes as she listens too, and sometimes she’ll do what she’s dubbed ‘remote viewing’. It’s a simple technique once she figured it out that allows her to access someone’s senses through their point of view without them even noticing she’s there. She mostly does that to gather information on how the Avengers fight. Her focus remains Tony Stark but information on anyone who would come to his aid is also useful. She thinks her primary concern past Stark is Bucky Barnes.

The man is a wild card with chaos just beneath the surface of his mind and he threatens to fall into it more often than he doesn’t. He’s a loose canon and no one even knows it yet. But he’s protective of Stark and that will be a problem. Not because she’s particularly worried about being killed or even hurt by Barnes- she’s rather impervious to damage these days- but because Barnes has his own loose canon attached to him in the form of one Steve Rogers, man out of his time and he feels it too. Of the minds in the Tower his is strong, one of the strongest, and his grief is palpable, as is his loss. And he will do everything and anything in his power to keep from losing Bucky Barnes, and his connection to a time he felt most comfortable in, again.

Its unlikely that Steve would be able to cause harm to her, but she knows first hand what determination can do to a person and the sharp edge of desperation attached to Steve’s love for Bucky is only another advantage for him. She knows all too well what loss will do to a person too, so she plans to separate them before they become a concern. The Avengers already keep their distance from Stark from the most part, minus Natasha, so he’s already done most of the work there himself. She supposes his general arrogance and unlikable personality do a lot to push people away from him. It suits her needs now. That leaves Barnes, and Steve will go with him more than willingly, and Romanov. She thinks she’s got a way to distract Natasha and she has several plans for Stark but they all need the right timing. This needs to play out exactly right if its going to work the way she’d like.

In theory she could just use mind magic to tear them all apart, set them against each other but she knows from experience that it wears off eventually. That would mean that eventually her manipulations would be found out and she’s not looking to get caught. So instead she’s working on a plan that involves manipulation, but the kind that only influences what everyone involved already thinks. That way it’s harder to notice and more permanent if their own opinions are being validated. It will be easy, for example, to convince Stark that Steve is working against him when he knows that he does, in a way, already do that. And convincing anyone Stark is dangerously arrogant and a danger to the world is just enlightening them to the truth but all the Avengers think that to some degree. Its easier to tamper with what’s there than to create something new.

Her plan needing timing is something she’d been worried about until one Bucky Barnes gave her a perfect opening. Sweet of him to put the kind of trust in Stark that it requires to allow him to tip over the edge of subspace straight into bliss, especially since it makes his more… selfish motivations behind their relationship far easier to exploit. It hurts to find out someone you like is only using you as the glue to hold their life together. But finding out someone you have an explicit trust in and someone you think trusts you back is using you- well, that stings worse. And it removes two large parts of her problem pieces in this puzzle. Barnes goes, so does Steve. Which leaves Natasha to deal with and she’s not the easiest to manipulate, but she is distant in her support for Stark so that’s a benefit. Her naturally distrustful nature may just work for Wanda.

With the beginnings of a plan in place she leaves the Starbucks she’s currently sitting in and heads home to work on the stone. She’s made no progress in some time but she’s hoping to learn to understand more with her experiments as her power level increases. She also wonders if her prolonged exposure to the mind stone increases her power level but she’s unsure about that and has no current way to test it in a meaningful manner. At some point she hopes to expand her ability to test her power level relative to the stone but for now she makes do with what she has.

There are more experiments she’d like to run on the stone itself but to do what she has in mind she’d need a lab and she doesn’t want to tip HYDRA off as to where the stone is. The fact that no one has managed to track her down thus far is nothing short of a miracle in her favor and she’s not prepared to stretch her limits. She largely suspects that her ability to alter minds is what has kept her mostly hidden from HYDRA. That and she erased all their data on the mind stone’s signature when she broke into that HYDRA base. She’s only heard rumors her whole life about their experiments and she’d been hoping to find something akin to the super soldier serum. What she found instead was the stone and at the time she hadn’t even realized what she stole.

Turns out it’s a hell of a lot more valuable than super soldier serum and it made her a hell of a lot more powerful than Captain America. It had all been an accident, an experiment gone wrong that probably should have killed her. But it didn’t- it made her stronger and now she’s going to use that strength to do what she’s wanted to do but lacked the resources for. Kill Tony Stark. She’s killed everyone else involved in her parents’ and brother’s deaths up until this point- it’d taken a lot of work to do it too. Finding out who made the call, who dropped the bomb, _which_ terrorist organization it was specifically- its not easy work and she thinks most her age wouldn’t have managed. But she’s nothing if not determined and she’s going to finish what she’s started.

Next on her list is Tony Stark- that fucking bomb with his name on it is permanently burnt into her brain. Two days she had to stare at it- the second one had been the one to kill everyone else in the house- and unlucky her she survived. She’s looked into the type of bomb used too and its fail rate is basically nothing. So not only did she survive her family, she survived an event that’s less likely than her being killed by a cow. Not only that, but she had to stare at the fucking thing for two days before she’d been found in the rubble. That isn’t the kind of thing that’s easily forgotten and she’ll make sure Stark won’t be able to forget her either.

*

By now Tony is good at sensing when Bucky needs a Dom- half of it is instinct and the other half is reading his body language successfully. So when he walks into the communal kitchen to find Steve talking at Bucky he knows he needs _something_ so Tony goes over to the cupboards to try and think up an excuse to Dom poor Bucky. When he finds no coffee he smiles to himself for a moment before he lets it drop, “hey Bucky,” he says, turning around as he speaks, “can you grab coffee from downstairs? Apparently we don’t have any left here.”

Bucky is basically out of his seat before Tony has finished his sentence, plodding off to do as he’s told while Steve glares at Tony. He has no idea what for- the command was so innocuous that he could have issued it to any of the Avengers, Steve included, and it wouldn’t have been weird. Whatever, he guesses- its Steve’s problem. It isn’t until he’s half turned around again that Steve gets out of his seat and walks over, reaching over Tony’s head to pull coffee off a shelf higher than Tony’s head. “Apparently you were too short to see it,” he tells Tony, handing him the coffee.

He rolls his eyes, “then I guess we have extra now. Not a bad thing when half the team lives on coffee,” he points out, sticking the grounds back into the cupboard. What the hell is even _up_ Steve’s ass today? Bucky walks back in then, gaze bouncing between the two glaring at each other before Tony breaks it to deal with Bucky. He’s in desperate need of direction and thankfully excuses are coming easy to him today. He pulls his phone from his pocket as he steps away from Steve and lets out an annoyed noise that mostly isn’t faked.

“Shit, Pep needs me to grab some paperwork. Can you make my coffee?” he asks Bucky, who already knows how he likes it. Bucky nods and steps around him to do what he’s been instructed but Steve makes an irritated noise.

“He’s not your slave, Tony,” he says in an annoyed tone. He whips around to tell Steve off for that buy Bucky beats him to it.

“He asked me to do two things, Steve. Chill,” he says, voice soft but the undercurrent of confusion and annoyance isn’t lost on Steve or Tony. Steve looks over to Bucky, shocked with what is basically an outburst considering his normal behavior and Bucky holds eye contact with him for a moment before returning to his task. For Bucky its basically a standoff and Steve obviously doesn’t know how to take it. Tony, on the other hand, feels surprisingly pleased with this. It’s a warm, pleasant feeling to see his unusually submissive sub stand up for him when that can’t be easy. But Tony has fake paperwork to go get so he makes his way downstairs. Pepper had sent him a text anyways but not about paperwork.

When he gets there Pepper looks relieved, “oh thank god. Tony, tell Hope that her wedding color ideas are just tacky,” she says, spinning the laptop around.

He frowns, “you want my advice on wedding- Hope what the fuck kind of color combination even _is_ that? What are you, one of those emu kids with the weird hair?” he asks and Pepper snorts.

“Emo, Tony. Emu is a bird,” she corrects.

He rolls his eyes, “who cares what it is, that color scheme looks like a peacock dry fucked pride flag and then a hobo shat on the results. Pepper is right, that’s terrible and you should never, _ever_ let that scheme see the light of day,” he tells Hope, who’s face now appears in the frame of the computer.

“You know what, that’s rude. Scott helped me pick the colors,” she says and Tony has no fucking clue who that is but he knows that’s the problem.

“You should fire Scott,” he says and Pepper bursts out laughing.

“Scott is a friend,” Hope clarifies.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “did I fucking stutter? You can fire shitty friends too and this guy clearly wants to ruin your wedding,” he says.

“Agreed,” Pepper says. “So that’s settled, the colors are cream and gold- classic, and elegant.”

“Tony, tell her that’s boring,” Hope says.

He sighs, “oh come on, give her a little color. Throw in brown, it fits with the scheme already and you can make it work,” he says, having full faith Pepper can, in fact, do that.

“If I get a color I chose yellow,” Hope says, interrupting.

Pepper makes a face, “honey, yellow belongs on bees and Tony’s ugly sports cars, not wedding décor.”

“Yellow is on the Wasp costume,” Hope says in her defense and even Tony has to wrinkle his nose with Pepper.

“I think that makes my decision easier, not harder,” Pepper tells her.

“Brown is the color of Scott’s personality, we’re not using that in the wedding,” Hope says.

Tony sighs, “you know what, Tiffany blue. Classic, elegant, and probably not the color of anyone’s personality,” he says. “Problem solved.”

Surprisingly both women actually seem to consider it before Pepper nods, “that’s acceptable,” she says.

“Not my favorite color, but it would look good with cream,” Hope says.

“We’re nixing the gold, then,” Pepper tells her and the two start in on flower arrangements. Tony figures his work is done so he leaves, intent to go back to Bucky. And his coffee.

When he gets back to the kitchen Steve is gone, thankfully, and Bucky is sitting patiently with his coffee. He reaches out and runs his hand down Bucky’s arm, the flesh one, mostly unconsciously but it gets a positive reaction regardless. Bucky lets out a soft sigh and leans forward in his seat, pressing his face into Tony’s chest. “You need to go down again, don’t you?” he asks softly, wrapping his arms around Bucky. He nods a little and Tony releases a soft puff of breath. “Guess you have seventy years to catch up on, hmm? J, order some breakfast. Bucky, come with me,” he says, pulling him gently out of his seat, coffee in his free hand.

Bucky follows willingly, walking two steps behind Tony and he wonders if that’s some remnants of forties sub etiquette, HYDRA, or something else. Ideally he’d just ask but at the moment Bucky has other things on the brain she he chooses to deal with that first. “On your knees,” he tells Bucky, who falls into perfect position easily. He wonders about that too- Steve said he’d always been unruly and Tony has seen _zero_ evidence for that- but that’s another one of those things he’ll have to ask about later. He grabs the brush that’s made its way permanently to his nightstand and returns to the end of his bed, sitting down. “Come here,” he tells Bucky. They’re simple commands, easy to follow and that’s the point.

Normally he isn’t this soft- soft yeah, but not like he is with Bucky. But he needs someone gentle, someone who will take it slow and work on his terms rather than their own. Not long ago Tony wouldn’t have pegged himself as the kind of person to be that patient but it’s surprisingly easy for him. Or maybe that’s because he’s always liked a project, not that that’s what Bucky is to him. But the extra amount of care and work requires a level of detail Tony doesn’t usually find in his relationships. Usually this is the kind of thing he finds in his work- engineering- because machines are finicky and software is even worse. He’s always wondered if that’s why his interest in relationships tended to wane once he figured his partner out- unlike machines people aren’t usually prepared for upgrades or improvements. People tend to like what works for them and don’t try new ways of doing the same things or different things.

That’s fine for them, Tony supposes, but it gets boring to him. Monotonous. Pepper had noticed when they were still together but he had loved her, still does in a way, so he dealt with it. Not her fault he has a small attention span. But she eventually got tired of things too and he can’t say he blames her for leaving. It was no one’s fault really, and to Tony’s surprise she ended up with his childhood best friend, the one he had before he met Rhodey but hadn’t spoken to in _years_. Its kind of funny that they work together now because Hope used to beat up his bullies in grade school and she does that now too. Except usually he helps her out now instead of flat out hiding behind her. Kids use to make fun of him for it but he felt that if Hope was willing to risk her face and he wasn’t, so be it. And Hope didn’t mind.

She’s good for Pepper now and their dynamic is pretty interesting. Switches, traditionally, used to take one role or the other- Dom or sub- and stick with them. But lately switches have taken to, well, switching. He guesses that’s because relationship values of the past have always privileged Dom/sub relationships and of course people get confused when people don’t naturally fall into one or the other. People get a lot more confused when subs date other subs or Doms date Doms. But switches seem to be the most confusing because people assume Doms and subs are opposites, so therefore they can’t exist in the same person. Tony personally thinks that’s stupid mostly because even a good Dom needs a break every once and while and Pepper’s switch status sometimes came in handy. Domming for her comes more naturally than it would a sub and what the hell, it’d been fun so he didn’t mind playing sub every once and awhile.

He’s positive Hope is a way better sub than he’d ever been, and probably a better Dom too even if that’s more of a Pepper specific thing. Pepper seems less stressed at least and he’s sure she’s less irritated with consistently having to play one role over the other. He knows it annoyed her when they were together but submitting does not come easy to him by nature and thanks to experience. Letting go of control when near everyone in your life has tried to hurt you at the least or kill you at the worst leaves a guy with issues. Makes him wonder how Bucky gives in to him so easily, or maybe that’s just something he’s willing to do with Tony. Bit selfish, wishing it’s the latter, but he’s never really been good at the selfless thing.

The brush goes through Bucky’s hair easily partially because Bucky started actually taking care of it on his own and partially because Tony brushes it so much himself. It’s an easy way to calm him and he loves hair probably more than normal people. Pepper used to tease him about it and so did Rhodey but he damn well knows they both enjoyed him brushing their hair, especially Rhodey. He hated taking care of it himself given the amount of upkeep so he’d been happy to let Tony deal with it. He shaved it off and remained bald as soon as Tony wasn’t around to care for it all the time, which Tony finds amusing.

Bucky leans into his leg and the metal arm is uncomfortable but Tony doesn’t say anything about that. Instead he figures now is a good time to ask Bucky some questions. He’s calmer now and Tony is curious. “What were relationships like in the forties?” he asks softly, running his fingers through Bucky’s hair as he asks, gently kneading at his scalp. He thinks it will make the question feel less threatening and thankfully it seems to work. Bucky’s brief tense loosens and he leans back into Tony.

“Not anything like now,” he says softly.

Yeah, Tony has gathered that but he doesn’t let his slight irritation show. Bucky isn’t exactly the wordy type. At least not now. “Steve said pain play was a big thing then, before the war hit anyways.” He hadn’t elaborated on what happened after but Tony happens to know that section of history is where soft Doms, who’d pretty much always been deemed useless until that point, suddenly hit a huge amount of popularity. He suspects in a world where pain is your new normal, especially if you were in the war, looses its pleasure factor. So Doms more like him, the ones that prefer things that aren’t necessarily painful, suddenly found themselves highly sought after. That trend fell away in the sixties and seventies but soft Doms never did find themselves completely dismissed again. But it would be interesting to hear a sub’s take on that history- its not like there’s much to go on in actual history texts unless you’re intentionally looking for sub histories.

Bucky nods softly, “Yeah. Then everyone was starving so aftercare became a real pain in the ass when no one really had the means to recover. So people found a way around it,” Bucky murmurs. Hmm. That’s the first Tony has ever heard of _that_ but it does make sense. Pain play requires a recovery time and if you don’t have access to food that will drastically affect healing.

“Guess by then you were already in the war, hmm?” he asks softly.

Bucky gives another affirmative nod. “I stole Steve’s records of being a Dom. Turns out he stole my health records so,” he mumbles. So they’re even, Tony guesses.

He snorts, “I can’t believe either one of you wanted to be in that.” Afghanistan comes to mind- the bomb, the torture, it all being his own damn fault anyways. That isn’t even as quarter as nasty as World War Two but he knows for sure he has no desire to be in a war. Has no idea how Rhodey handles it.

“Wars back then were justified. Or at least they felt that way. They don’t feel so justified now,” he says.

They aren’t. People, including Tony once he pulled his head out of his ass, are disillusioned about war and military involvement. Even Rhodey doesn’t like everything the military does and he defends their actions probably more than he should. “America made some bad choices in picking fights. Doesn’t give people a lot of faith,” he says. Steve, when he’d first been defrosted, had a hard time with that. Now Tony thinks he’s flown too far into the other extreme but he mostly avoids the guy so it hasn’t resulted in him saying anything.

Bucky hums, falling silent for a moment before he speaks. “You used to think more like we did in the forties. What happened?” he asks quietly.

Tony’s fingers pause in Bucky’s hair but its only fair that he gets to ask questions too, and he’s never done it before. He can feel Bucky tense when he doesn’t respond so he resumes petting Bucky’s hair. “I made a bomb, something I probably shouldn’t have. I thought I was keeping people safe but-” but a world that uses bombs to solve their problems is never safe. He sighs. “I got kidnapped by terrorists, orchestrated by my business partner at the time, and it taught me a thing or two. Mostly that I was wrong.” And Yinsen. Fuck, that’d been a metaphorical shot to the heart. Tony had earned the pain but Yinsen didn’t deserve to die for an arms dealer who got his family killed. Tony will never be worthy of that sacrifice.

Bucky’s hand curls around his ankle, drawing him out of his own mind and he realizes he’s stopped petting Bucky. Shit. “Steve says that reactor thing, the power source to your suit, used to be _in_ your chest,” Bucky murmurs.

He nods, then remembers that Bucky isn’t facing him. “Yeah. Yinsen- a man that was with me in the caves the terrorists tortured me in- he uh. Preformed surgery on me. I had shrapnel in my heart and the reactor was keeping it from migrating around and killing me. I was lucky enough to have it removed.” He hadn’t realized how fucked his breathing capacity was, or how much pain he was usually in until it was gone. Pepper thought maybe he’d leave Iron Man behind but he didn’t, which ultimately ended their relationship.

“You had surgery in a _cave_?” Bucky asks, shock tingeing his voice as he half turns, then remembers his place and goes back to leaning against Tony. He runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair again; a silent way of telling him that he didn’t really care about the outburst.

“Yeah. Hurt like a bitch,” he says.

“Guess the anesthetics weren’t that good,” Bucky murmurs.

Tony snorts, “there weren’t any anesthetics, I think the best I got was Advil.” Like that did shit all, really.

He’s never been a believer- science mostly runs contrary to faith at least to him- but the fact that he survived open heart surgery in a cave solidified his belief that god doesn’t exist. No god Tony would worship would save a fucking _arms dealer_ over people who really need it. People like Yinsen’s family, or anyone else affected by his weapons. So god doesn’t exist- if he did Tony would be dead.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued warnings for Wanda's mental manipulations.

Today Stark’s mind is louder than usual and Wanda finds it difficult to drown out. Its like his mind is screaming in guilt and she wants to hear none of it. His arrogance is painful to listen to, mentally whining and crying about everything being his own fault like he has that kind of power to begin with. She makes her notes still, knowing how he thinks is useful for manipulation, but listening to it grates her nerves. Beyond that the mind that’s singing the most today is, surprisingly, Bucky Barnes. In normal circumstances that would be strange, but in subspace that’s stranger. His mind glows bright, buoyed by Stark’s commands and it’s distracting.

She comes here to learn useful information, not to listen to an old man whine and an older man float in his bliss. Irritation prickles her brain but she suspects it’s from her working on the stone all night. The facts remain the same- the signature is similar to the one she emits with her powers, it seems to have some kind of thought process of its own but she doesn’t understand it, and it can hold great influence over others when wielded correctly. It functions not unlike herself and she wonders if the stone made her this way or if maybe she’s influenced the stone. Or maybe she’s always been like this even if she can’t remember a time in her childhood where she felt as lost and angry as she does now. But perhaps that’s just nostalgia talking.

Wanda sits back in her seat and closes her eyes for a moment, working to block everything out while she concentrates. It’s hard, sometimes, to just hear her own thoughts rather than everyone else’s around her but it’s a necessary thing to sometimes only have herself in her head. “Um, Miss?” a small, squeaky voice to her left says. She looks over and finds a small teen to her left fidgeting slightly, obviously nervous but his mind confirms it. “You dropped this earlier and I only just found you but I thought maybe you’d want it back,” he says and he holds out a faded, wrinkled picture of her family. She snatches it out of his grasp fast, then feels bad when guilt and confusion cloud his thoughts.

“Sorry,” she says, accent making the word sound different even to her. She’s perhaps too used to American speech by now. “Its my family and…” she trails off, her voice closing up a little unexpectedly. It’s been years, she reminds herself. She should be able to speak about this by now without dissolving into tears.

“Hey, its okay. Well not really, but you know” the teens says nervously, waving a hand around. “Sokovian?” he asks and she frowns, wondering how he figured that out. “The flag on your bag,” he says, gesturing to a patch she’d sown on years ago when her plans were just that. It’s a relic from another life.

“Oh. Yes, I’m Sovokian,” she says though the country has fallen completely. She’s not even sure it’s still considered a country it’s so ravaged.

He nods, considers the situation, and she can feel a flurry of thoughts go by at a rapid speed- too fast for her to catch. A symptom of ADHD she’s learned, though the thought process isn’t limited to that group. They just happen to be one of the only groups of people that think like that all the time, thoughts rattling around too fast for her to read though they seem to keep up with themselves just fine. “Sorry,” he says eventually. “I know America was like… involved there and we probably shouldn’t have been. So I’m sorry your home got wrecked.”

His mind burns bright with sincerity and she’s touched unexpectedly by it. She smiles sadly, just a little, “to be fair it was a failed state before America showed up,” she murmurs. But America certainly didn’t help, especially when they teamed up with HYDRA. But Americans don’t talk about that.

“I mean I guess. Sorry anyways though, I hope that things here don’t suck,” he says and she smiles, a little more genuinely this time.

“They aren’t bad,” she says. She’s got her plans to keep her busy and the research into the stone when that bores her. And sometimes she’ll sneak into tourist locations, curious about the beauty of the country she’s in even if its been ugly to her and others.

“That’s good! Oh, and I’m Peter,” he says, extending his hand. She sees a flash of something, red and blue, before it disappears from his mind again.

“Wanda,” she says, holding her hand out back. When he grasps it she can feel his power. Curiously though he feels hers _back_ and the hairs on his arms stand straight up. His eyes go a little wide but he says nothing and for that she’s grateful.

“So,” Peter says after a moment of surprise, “what grade are you in?” She had forgotten, briefly, how young she is. Right then, in America she’s still be in high school but she doesn’t tell Peter that.

“Actually I just graduated,” she says. Its not entirely false- she knows more than enough to get a GED not that she has one and she _is_ old enough to have graduated from high school. Barely, but she is.

Peter brightens a little, “cool! Mind if I sit down?” he asks, gesturing to the seat across the table from her. She shrugs and tells him to go ahead, wondering how starved for contact she is if she’s entertaining random teens.

*

Bucky hasn’t felt this human in a long, _long_ time and its nice. Not so nice that at some point he’ll have to go back to Steve’s overprotective nature, but there’s always a downside. “You okay?” Tony asks softly, looking down at him curled into Tony’s side. A little strange with the height difference but Bucky doesn’t mind.

“‘M’fine,” he slurs out, not expecting his words to slide together. “I’m fine,” he repeats, less confused sounding and Tony seems to take that as a more concrete proof of his being okay.

“You were under for awhile,” Tony says but the slight tone of worry tingeing his voice gives him away. Truthfully Bucky would have liked to stay there floating in subspace longer but Tony had dragged him back to reality so here he is.

“Coulda left me there longer,” he murmurs, dropping his cheek to Tony’s chest. He wonders if he’d be able to do that if the reactor was still there, in his chest. He decides he wouldn’t risk it if it was. He hadn’t meant to throw off Tony’s mood but after he asked about what changed in how people viewed war Tony had ended up needing their time together as much as he did. It had been a little different this time, with both of them in need rather than just Bucky but he kind of likes it better that way. Something about Tony’s demeanor changes and he likes whatever than change is.

Tony’s fingers trail slowly down his arm and back up again. He’s fond of stimulation of some kind and today Bucky got an introduction to _food_ in play of all things. There are a lot of things people do now that they didn’t when he’d been fully aware of himself or so Tony tells him. When he offered to send information to him Bucky accepted because there’s a small something there in the back of his mind that wants to know. He doesn’t know what he wants to know but he wants to know it.

He supposes in a more specific way he wants to know how _Tony_ does things. Doms in Bucky’s time weren’t nearly as soft as Tony is, always working to make their subs command them but Tony doesn’t have that attitude at all. There’s no follow instructions _or else_ , he just expects Bucky to follow his orders. Bucky thinks that the first kind of Dom lacks confidence in a way that hadn’t been surprising for the time. They’d been threatened by sub’s rights movements that took a backseat as the war picked up and they fought hard for control. Tony doesn’t seem concerned with fighting for control; he just expects to have it. Its funny because that’s the way Doms in the forties wanted to be, always in unquestioning control, and yet Tony achieves that just fine without the ridiculous methods of control used in Bucky’s youth.

So Bucky wants to know more of how that works, how Tony managed to _gain_ that confidence to begin with considering how soft his methods are. It’s the most interest he’s taken in anything since… the war really, maybe even before that. When he’d been kidnapped, experimented on, and then rescued it somehow became all about Steve in a way that had been unfamiliar and foreign and not necessarily in a good way. Being in the future is that on high, especially with all the memories of the last seventy years worth of his handiwork. Tony is a wonderful distraction though and Bucky is more than happy to linger here in this emotional liminal space, unsure of where to go next but knowing for sure he has no interest in going backwards.

“Seems to be a common theme here,” Tony says, teasing tone to his voice. “Greedy for attention, hmm?”

“Mm, yes please,” Bucky says before he thinks, then winces but Tony just laughs. He runs his fingers up, then down, his arm again and he relaxes a little, unaware that he’d tensed after he spoke.

“I don’t mind,” Tony says softly. “Truthfully I like being the center of someone’s attention probably too much anyways.” Bucky frowns for a moment, unsure how _Tony_ would be the center of attention in their time together given that Bucky is the one who gets all the attention but it occurs to him that Bucky’s full focus is on Tony. He doesn’t mind Tony being the center of his attention either.

“I like my attention on you,” he murmurs. “You’re… not what I’m used to. In a good way,” he adds when he realizes that doesn’t sound right.

Tony lets out a soft laugh. “If Doms were anything like my father was in your time I will take that as high praise. Guy was a fucking prick,” Tony mumbles. Its not the first time Tony has mentioned Howard in a disparaging way but Bucky wonders why that is.

“When I knew Howard he seemed alright. Little bit hung up on Steve, but not terrible. Guess that changed,” he says softly, feeling Tony tense under him. Not a good subject, then.

Tony lets out an annoyed huff and Bucky regrets his words immediately but Tony starts running his fingers up and down his arm again. He wonders if Tony is aware that he’s doing that as reassurance or not though Bucky supposes he doesn’t care either way. “Whatever Howard was like in his youth he grew out of it by the time I was born. He was cold, calculating, never even told me he _liked_ me let alone much else. And he didn’t grow out of his obsession with Steve either- I got compared to him _all_ the time. Used to drive me fucking _nuts_.” The resentment in his voice is hard to miss and Bucky wonders if there’s more to it. He’d have to be on another planet to miss the tension between Tony and Steve but no one mentions what happened there, not to him anyways.

“He hurt you,” Bucky says and its not a question.

“Yeah. Seemed to like it too. I had an ex tell me once that that’s why I was a broken Dom. That teaches me for trusting someone named ‘Sunset’. That, and it turned out she worked for terrorists but you know. Mostly the name thing,” he jokes, trying and mostly failing to lighten the mood.

So Tony has a history with abuse then. That explains how and why he’s so attentive. “Howard sounds like a jackass,” Bucky says eventually and Tony laughs.

“Understatement of the year, Buck.”

*

Natasha slides into the seat next to Tony’s holding a glass of red wine. “You should be careful with Barnes,” she says and Tony feels his damn face give him away immediately thanks to the shock. Natasha snorts, rolling her eyes, “yeah everyone but Steve sees it. You’ve been subtle in his defense, but the casual way you Dom Bucky around is pretty obvious to anyone familiar with your style.”

Tony squints, “since when did you become familiar with my style?” he asks. Its not like they talk about it on account of Natasha being a raging lesbian. He thought she had a thing for Clint for awhile there but it turns out his gaydar is shit. Not that surprising, he had no idea Rhodey was bisexual until they slept together and even then he wondered. Granted Rhodey is like two percent bisexual but it counts still. He didn’t know about Pepper either until Hope and he’s been told quite reliably that people who are some type of gay find each other and usually know about it too. Except him apparently, he has no idea what’s going on ever and at this point he assumes everyone he talks to on a regular basis is a gay of some kind. So far that’s been mostly true.

Nat grins, “I learned a lot about you when I briefly worked for Pepper,” she points out.

“You also wrote a pretty disparaging report. I mean in your defense the narcissist thing is pretty on point but the rest? Rude.” So he’d been a little erratic, isn’t everyone who’s dying a little? He feels like he earned most of that minus that party and being a jackass at it, Rhodey was right to kick his ass. But then he’d been testing him too.

Pepper has been an obvious if briefly overlooked choice for his company. But someone needed to be Iron Man and sure its hard to deal with villains, but its harder to deal with friends. You know their history, and you have good memories together. Its difficult to set that aside and tell someone they’re being a jackass but Rhodey did it. And if he can beat Tony’s ass and tell him he doesn’t deserve to be Iron Man than he’s more than worthy of taking the title. More worthy than Tony is currently holding it but Rhodey’s enjoying the whole War Machine thing even if he’s got the dumbest name ever. Tony doesn’t tell him that because he doesn’t want to burst his bubble.

Natasha rolls her eyes at him. “I was wrong about you. You should be impressed, it doesn’t happen often because I’m usually very good at reading people. But you’re damn good at projecting an image and your dying had heightened it. That, and narcissists don’t admit they’re narcissists, especially when they’re offended at the report on them they’ve just read. You should be careful with Barnes, though,” she repeats.

He sighs, “and why, pray tell, is that?” He’s sure she’s got a whole list of reasons but he’s not nearly as sure that he’ll give a damn about them.

She frowns for a moment, unsure how to go forward, but she does eventually. “I’m not sure… I think he needs therapy, not a Dom,” she says eventually.

Nice way of saying ‘I think he’s using you’ but Natasha is the master of saying seven different things in a single sentence. “So I’ll get him a therapist,” Tony says easily, dismissively. If Natasha wants to play this game he’s going to force her to say what she thinks- _actually_ thinks. He doesn’t have time for games and he’s never been fond of them even if he’s gotten good at them. If he knows he’s playing, anyways.

“Tony,” she says, pauses because she already knows she’s given herself away and that he won’t listen. Not really his strong suit, that. He’ll consider it one of his many ‘you should work on it’ traits along with most of the rest of his personality. “I just don’t want to see you hurt,” she says eventually, trying a new angle that doesn’t look good on her.

“You don’t care if I get hurt Nat, you never have and I know its not a personal thing. Its just not your style,” he says. It sounds more like a jab than he means it to be because the statement is true. Natasha has always and will always be more out for herself than anyone else and he doesn’t think that’s a bad way to be, not necessarily. She wouldn’t actively put anyone in danger to achieve her ends, not if they weren’t someone who’d deserve what they got, so he’s not really concerned with her selfish nature. It’d be hypocritical to care anyways, or at least that’s what he told himself once he finished licking his wounds the first time she screwed him seven ways to Sunday. Took him awhile to trust her again after that. Probably still doesn’t if his current reaction is any indication.

He’d listen to Rhodey right away. And Pepper. But they both know things about him that no one does, that he just doesn’t allow other people to see and for good reason.

“Its not that I don’t care, Tony, its just that I don’t see the point in saving people from themselves. That’s the kind of heroism that people can do on their own. But I’m not so sure you can,” she says. He gives her a dirty look even though its not warranted. She isn’t wrong, but he still resents that.

“I appreciate your concern, Natasha, but if anyone is danger of being hurt I’m pretty sure that’s Bucky, not me.” He’s the one with the horrible past, he’s the one with the resulting trauma, and he’s the one who’s in a fragile state of mind right now. Not Tony. Even so they’re both survivors and they’ve both been through their own brand of hell- even if this goes sideways they’ll live because they’ve lived through way worse.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued warnings for Wanda's manipulations and also some illusions to abuse/ HYDRA.

Romanov isn’t easy to manipulate at least in theory so Wanda chooses to target something she already suspects and heightens it just a little, enough that she’ll go to Stark with her concerns. She needs a way to separate them and she’s felt the growing bond between him and Barnes and she knows Tony still holds seeds of suspicion in his subconscious where Natasha is concerned. It’s easy to play Natasha’s natural suspicion against Stark’s stupidity and watch the resulting rift. Almost too easy honestly. She’d worry about how simple the manipulations were if not for her ability to hear the results.

Stark’s suspicion in Natasha takes an upturn and Natasha’s frustration takes the same direction. She hadn’t even had to manipulate that- Natasha became more frustrated simply because she’s paying more attention to Barnes and Stark’s relationship. Strange that she holds suspicion in _Barnes_ when its Stark that holds the power, even if Bucky has a suspect reasoning for his attachment to Stark. Maybe they should have considered his psychology _before_ throwing him to the metaphorical wolves. It’s not his fault he’s sought out the only structure that’s come his way, really. Wanda feels bad for him, wonders how he’ll fair when she manages to kill Stark off. But her plan is to separate them first so maybe he’ll figure it out before then anyway.

“Hey!” a familiar, squeaky voice says from behind her and she turns, finding Peter there with a friend of his. The friend is suspicious, and, unlike Peter he’s easier to read thanks to a more normal thought speed. She sees the same flashes of red and blue that had appeared in Peter’s mind several times when talking to him but with his friend the images are clearer. Clear enough that she recognizes them from the news- Spiderman, the public has dubbed him. Now that’s curious but she says nothing.

“Hey,” she says back, offering him a small smile. He walks over unafraid, something she’s no longer used to. In her country it’s hard to trust people you don’t know and after Sokovia went to shit she’d been on a mission, no time for trust. “This is Wanda,” Peter says to his friend. “And Wanda, this is Ned.” He offers a small wave at her, which she returns. “So what have you been up to?” he asks.

Of all the questions she’s prepared herself to answer she has no clue how to answer that one. A random teen a couple years younger than her thwarts her carefully laid plans, go figure. Or at least he’s more capable than most would be in his place not that he’d succeed. She looks down at her notes and pulls a headphone out of her ear. “Taking notes on a podcast,” she lies, the excuse coming to her fast.

Peter frowns but its Ned who asks what they’re both thinking. “Why would you take notes on a podcast?” he asks.

Good question. “Its on neuroscience and I’m going to med school in the fall,” she says, falling back on her previous ambitions to save herself from her lie. They both buy it so at least there’s that. In her defense she _does_ listen to podcasts on neuroscience, but its usually how various enhancements affect the body and she doesn’t take notes on them. She closes her notebook as they sit down, sliding it away from prying eyes who don’t need to see her notes on Tony Stark’s thinking patterns.

“Oh, cool,” Peter says. “I want to be a reporter!” Wanda smiles as various disparaging headlines flick across both his and Ned’s minds. Looks like Peter might be able to give himself a better reputation that way.

“I kind of want to be a human failure, so the good news is that I already reached my goal,” Ned says but images of food cross his mind. He has aspirations to be a chef but she can feel his apprehension. Its odd to her given that this country offers more opportunities than her own. The notion of someone being afraid to take that chance confuses her but she can’t say anything about it. Peter knows that she’s enhanced, he can feel it, but doesn’t know what her mutations are and she’s not about to fill him in by asking Ned about his nervousness.

“You’re not a human failure,” Peter says to Ned, frowning and the two start in on what is obviously a familiar argument. She settles in and watches the two of them bicker, unfamiliar with the usual banter of American teens her age. The two have an obvious familiarity with each other and the bright affection radiating off both their minds indicates that their relationship is a close one. Its… pleasant to watch, and pleasant to sit in given how she spends her days normally. Its been a long time since she’s sat with people who are genuinely happy. And since she accidentally acquired her powers she’s felt more strife and pain than she’s ever wanted to, especially considering her current goals. You don’t chase down terrorists without feeling the mental toll of it.

*

Tony is trying and mostly failing to make coffee when Steve basically corners him. He should tell JARVIS to keep Steve away from him too considering he has no interest in talking to him. Steve isn’t dense; Tony knows he’s noticed. “Bucky took a walk this morning,” he says and Tony frowns. He knew that because Bucky had brought him back gelato, something Tony didn’t even remember telling him he liked, but he sees no problem with it the say Steve’s tone implies he does.

“So?” he says eventually when Steve seems to expect an answer.

“So doesn’t that concern you?” he asks.

Actually the fact that he’s done _nothing_ since being back concerns Tony so this is an improvement. One that seems to stem directly from dropping into subspace on a regular basis but when Tony looked it up the research on whether or not subspace is beneficial to subs mentally is sketchy at best. Some studies say its what best for them, some studies say there’s no real affect either way, and a bunch more have inconclusive results. Tony supposes that the timing is either a coincidence or that something else about the situation has resulted in exploration. He’s spent a little more time acquainting himself with his surroundings too and frankly Tony thinks that’s a positive.

“No, I think Bucky showing interest in something that’s not… whatever he’s been spending time doing is probably good for him. Don’t really see why you’d disagree,” he says. He’s always on about Bucky’s health and whatever, Tony would think Steve would see this is a good thing but his response clears things up a little.

Steve crosses his arms and glares down at Tony, obviously some kind of stupid intimidation tactic not that it’ll work. Tony has had people who are far more terrifying threaten him and he gave them his home address and straight up told them to blow him up. They did and he survived that, so whatever Steve might think to throw at him isn’t going to be all that frightening. “So you don’t know what he does in his spare time, hmm?” he asks and its not what he says but the tone that tips Tony off.

So someone, and he’d bet on Natasha thanks to her sudden and unwanted concern, told Steve about his and Bucky’s relationship. And _he’s_ about to be the one getting a lecture on Bucky’s autonomy and free will. “No, not really,” Tony says truthfully because time with him isn’t what Tony calls spare time.

Steve doesn’t accept it though and clenches his jaw, “don’t plays stupid, it doesn’t suit you,” he says a little harshly.

Tony rolls his eyes, “I’m not playing stupid, I just don’t count time with me as ‘spare’. What he does outside of that is his business. I still don’t see why you’d think I’d care.” Best to admit to his relationship and get back to the actual point of this conversation than it would be to deny it and make an even bigger mess.

Steve steps forward, into his space, “if you think I’m supposed to just _let_ you do whatever it is you’re doing to Bucky you’ve got another thing coming,” he says in a low, dark tone.

“Oh for fuck sakes, Steve, step off it. You can’t control Bucky’s actions and _he_ came to _me_ if you’d like _that_ footage. You’re not his keeper, and we’re not prison guards. Bucky can have a relationship with whomever he wants and what he decides to do without you isn’t his concern unless he’s being hurt so get the hell out of my personal bubble,” he snaps. This entire conversation is a waste of his time and he feels no real need to put up with it but he gets the feeling that side stepping him will only result in being shoved directly back where he is so he stays there for the time being.

“Yeah, well I’m not convinced you _aren’t_ harming Bucky,” Steve tells him and Tony feels his face scrunch in disgust before the rest of his brain catches up with him.

“And what kind of evidence do you even have for that?” Tony asks. He’s not sure what he’s more offended by, Steve making baseless accusations, or that those accusations put him in the same camp as Howard. Like _hell_ he’d ever abuse his sub, or anyone else for that matter. At least not intentionally though he’s been told in no uncertain terms that next time he’s dying he gets no right to be a raging cockwad and he feels Rhodey and Pepper more than earned that. Words aren’t really this thing, not when it comes to feelings anyways, but they made a decent argument when they pointed out what an ass he’d been.

“No offense but you don’t exactly have the best history,” Steve says and Tony can think of a million incidents that he could use to prove his point, most of them too long ago to really reflect who he is now anyways, but he doubts Steve is thinking of any of them.

“Not the best history in _what_ , exactly?” he asks in a slow, low tone. “Because I will remind you I don’t _have_ a history of being abusive.” He has a history of abuse, and also a history of being a bit of a jackass, but minus when he was dying and making a fool of himself he has no history of abuse. And most of that was a bunch of stupid stunts to test the people around him instead of just asking questions like a damn normal person.

“But you have a history of being flighty, no long term relationships to speak of, you’re obviously emotionally stunted, and you’re clearly not qualified to deal with Bucky,” Steve says.

In his defense at least most of that is true, if taken out of context. “I _used_ to be flighty and I think I’ve proven myself _fine_ since my pre-Iron Man days, thanks. I may not have a lot of long-term relationships but that’s better than rushing into them without thinking, plus I was with Pepper for five years. Not sure what your old-timey definition is of a long-term relationship is but I think that counts, _plus_ our breakup was amicable, which shows emotional maturity. And speaking of- I’m emotionally stunted because I spent _seventeen_ years of my life being systematically abused by my father, then spent the next seventeen years being emotionally manipulated by his best friend before the guy tried to have me _killed_. It leaves a mark so sue me for having normal human reactions. But I _do_ think it makes me more qualified than most to deal with an abused sub than most. So you were _saying_?” he snaps.

“You have your own problems to figure out,” Steve tells him and Tony rolls his eyes again. “And you’re not that great at it,” he adds. True, Tony thinks, but neither is Steve.

“If we’re talking issues maybe I should point out that you’re not adjusting to the future at _all_ , you clearly have PTSD and refuse to see anyone about it, and you keep trying to play leader despite the fact that you don’t even have faith in what you’re leading. You’re disillusioned, and you’re desperate to go back to a past where you feel wanted, needed, and have a goal that’s obvious and morally correct. Do _you_ think you’re qualified to handle Bucky when you’re using him as a hit of nostalgia so you feel a little less lost out of your time?” he asks perhaps a little cruelly. Once, when he and Natasha had been licking their wounds after a Doombot invasion in New York _again_ Tony had asked about that, Steve’s lack of direction. But she has more faith in him than Tony does and told him to give him time to adjust. That was two years ago and Tony is pretty sure he’s gotten _worse_.

Normally he wouldn’t necessarily blame the guy- it has to suck to lose everything you care about sacrificing yourself to the world only to wake up in a world where your sacrifice maybe didn’t achieve what you wanted it to. He gets that even if he’ll never understand anyone who lives in the past- not his style at _all_ \- but now he’s just pissed off. Like Steve has a right to talk about issues when he spent a year hunting the fucking _earth_ for Bucky only because he desperately wants to feel at home again. Tony might feel more pity for that too, he’d do the same for Rhodey in a heartbeat and Rhodey _did_ do that for him, if it weren’t for his keeping vital information to himself. And there’s no reason that’s not selfish to keep what he has under wraps. Someone who’s willing to do that isn’t any more qualified to deal with Bucky’s mental health than he is.

“I think I’m more stable than you, all things considered,” Steve says, jaw clenching again and Tony lets out a sharp laugh.

“Buddy, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the only reason Bucky _has_ stability is because of me. Its not like _you_ funded finding him, _you_ fund his housing, or _you_ do much of anything given that you act more like a barnacle than a friend. Get off your high horse.” So he isn’t perfect, no one is, and Steve certainly isn’t. As if he has any right to judge Tony based on shit that isn’t even happening and from a hypocritical standpoint no less. And he’s more stable- sure, probably because Tony funds everything _he_ does too.

Steve goes to open his mouth in response but a small voice cuts him off. “Steve, stop. I like him and I think he’s good for me,” Bucky says, voice soft and quiet. But for Bucky it’s basically a scream and its enough to shut Tony and Steve up for a moment.

Tony sighs, “can you make my coffee? I can’t figure this stupid machine out,” he says, giving said machine a dirty look.

Bucky lets out a small laugh, “who’s the old man now?” he jokes, smiling just a little. It’s so unusual to see, Tony’s only heard him make jokes a few times before, and he grins in response. It’s nice to see him express a little personality once and awhile.

“In my defense I didn’t invent that. If I did it’d work,” he says. Bucky presses a button that Tony swears he’s pressed like fifty damn times before and the stupid thing works. Go fucking figure.

“Maybe it was you,” Bucky tells him, daring to, for a moment; make eye contact and Tony laughs.

“Guess so. I’m still throwing it out though, any piece of technology that’s complicated enough that _I_ can’t use it is obviously useless,” he says in his own defense.

*

Bucky kneels beside Tony’s bed, pleased with Tony’s fingers running through his hair. It feels nice to have it comb through the long strands and Tony is always so gentle. He doesn’t need to be but Bucky is glad that he is regardless. Tony is reading over something Pepper has sent him, Bucky thinks, but doesn’t ask because its none of his business. Tony remains relatively absorbed in the work too until he happens to look over, pulling the reading glasses off his face and frowning. “Did I not give you a pillow to kneel on?” he asks and Bucky shakes his head.

“Its fine,” he says when Tony looks distressed. He’s been through far worse than this. Actually this isn’t even going through anything, its pretty pleasant by all accounts.

“No it isn’t, I should have- never mind, come up here,” he says, shifting over and patting the bed beside him. Bucky doesn’t _mean_ to near dive at the bed, eager to get closer to Tony but he does. Tony doesn’t seem to mind though, he laughs and pets Bucky’s head, fingers trailing down his back too. “You seem… more lively,” Tony says after a few moments of silence.

Bucky’s brows draw together, unsure what that means in general or for him specifically. “What do you mean?” he asks, voice quieter than he meant for it to be. He feels himself tense a little too but Tony’s fingers continue trailing up and down his back, which is always a good sign he’s learned.

“Hey, shh, relax. Its good that you’re… taking an interest in things, exploring a little. I just want to know if there’s anything I’ve done or maybe not done to encourage it,” he says softly. Bucky tilts his head up, risking looking at Tony’s face and _god_ his eyes are gorgeous. A warm, pleasant brown that Bucky could stare at forever but he doesn’t, casting his eyes down again.

“I… like this. Makes me feel safe,” he murmurs. It’s easier for him, he thinks, to know there’s some kind of something to come back to. And if he gets lost somewhere he’s sure Tony will come find him. It’s a little easier to face the world with a safety net, especially one he sees regularly in the media. Tony has influence and it shows. Its like Tony is there with him even when he isn’t given that escaping his imagery is impossible. Exploration is less daunting with that reminder hanging around him wherever he goes.

“Yeah?” Tony murmurs softly, “what about this makes you feel safe, hmm?” His fingers trace their way along his back, travelling up his spine and then back down again.

Bucky thinks about it for a moment and Tony gives him that space. Its one of many things he’s learned to appreciate about Tony. “I like that you know what I need, and you’re patient,” he says quietly.

Tony hums faintly. “I’ve mostly been guessing at need and reading how you react to things. Not the best way of doing things- hey, shh, it’s not your fault. I’m not even sure you’d know how to communicate what you want and that’s not something you did to yourself. I don’t mind working through things slowly. But if you want something specific, tell me,” he says. And what if Tony doesn’t want what he does? He doesn’t think he’ll risk that. He has no idea what would happen then and what kind of Dom wants a sub that doesn’t want the same things they do? “Bucky?” Tony prompts and his hand stops moving on his back.

Damn it, and now he’s managed to screw things up and he doesn’t even know _what_ he’s done. Tony sighs above him.

“Bucky, if you want something then tell me. Even if nothing comes of it for whatever reason I want you to know you can tell me these things. You _should_ tell me these things if for no other reason than me knowing what you like,” he says.

He considers his response for a long moment, remembering that conversation they had some time ago about someone named ‘Sunset’ claiming Tony was a broken Dom. He wonders why but it seems rude to just ask like that. So he thinks about his words for a few seconds before he speaks. “What do you like?” he asks eventually, thinking it might be the easiest way to get to the bottom of things.

Tony laughs a little, “sensory play, mostly. People consider it soft but most people don’t block out all their senses and let their partner do whatever to them, either.” Bucky can feel himself react to that and he forces himself to relax. “Clearly you have experience,” Tony murmurs, “though I doubt any of it is positive.”

It isn’t. “Anything else?” he asks.

“Breath play, but I don’t foray into that much because of the risks,” he admits.

“Why senses?” Bucky asks. It would be easier to deal with pain, that he doesn’t mind. Wounds heal. Senses being toyed with don’t so much.

When Tony considers his answer Bucky knows he’s touched on something he maybe didn’t mean to. “My… my father was a shit person who used to beat the hell out of me and my mom. I just can’t fucking stomach doing anything like that to another person, especially not if I’m supposed to care about them. So I looked into other stuff and fell more into the mental side of things. Sensory play takes a lot of trust though, and most people dismiss it so- well, its been interesting,” he says finally.

“Wonder if they know that’s used to torture people,” Bucky mumbles without thinking.

Tony wraps his arms around him and Bucky feels his nose press into his hair. “Bucky, I would never do anything you didn’t want me to. _Ever_ ,” he tells him, determination in his tone. “If that isn’t what you want that’s fine, we can work something out. I’ve done it before. But I’ll never do something you don’t want me to.”

Bucky believes that.

*

Wanda smiles into her coffee and it gets wider when she spots Peter and waves him over. He grins, lopping on over to her looking pretty chipper himself. “You look happy,” he says and Wanda nods.

“A couple things I’ve been planning are working out in my favor,” she says casually. No need for him to know she’s successfully set the Avengers against each other, for now at least. Natasha had been prepared to confront Barnes about his motivations with Stark, but she managed to shift that a little in her mind. Why confront Barnes when she can go straight to Steve, who will sort out Barnes _and_ Stark? She’d sat on it for longer than Wanda would have liked and she’d been prepared to give her another mental poke when she finally went and found Steve.

Then Steve did what Wanda knew he’d do already but she gave his mind a little push, reminding him of all the bad things Stark has done over the years. It had sparked a natural suspicion he already held in Stark and he’d reacted better than she predicted, especially when Barnes when to Stark’s defense. She hadn’t even plotted that, it just happened but she thinks its useful. Now Steve is suspicious that Stark has done something to his precious Bucky, Stark is cut off from the only Avenger who cares about him thanks to his own pushing her away, Natasha walked herself into a corner, and soon she’ll make Stark more aware of Bucky’s real reasoning for their relationship. That’ll be sad, realizing that he’s only in it for what Stark offers him, not really him at all. Or at least that’s how he’ll see it, with a little help from her.

Peter raises an eyebrow but seems to sense he’ll get nothing more from her. “Well that’s good, I guess,” he says.

Wanda chooses to change the subject, curious about Peter’s good mood. The Avengers can wait- she’s actually growing fond of Peter and his sweet babbling. It reminds her of Pietro, who also moved a mile a minute in everything he did. Sometimes it hurts to be reminded of her twin, but Peter is a soft, live reminder that maybe all in the world isn’t as horrible as her life has been. Sometimes there’s still good. “So what has you in a good mood?” she asks, leaning forward in interest.

Peter perks back up, looking enthusiastic before he’s even told her and she likes that about him as well. It also reminds her of Pietro, who felt everything so strongly. “Well, I sort of had this crush on Ned, but he’s totally out of league anyways, and I think maybe he thought I was hung up on Liz and she’s okay but there was that awkward thing with her dad,” and image of a vulture of all things crosses his mind but the bird is strange looking, mechanical almost, and the image is gone again before she can sort it out. “Anyways so I didn’t really think I had a chance but then Michelle was kind of being an asshole, that’s her personality mostly, and he said something that maybe means I have a chance? I don’t know, but I kind of want it to work out,” he says.

Wanda smiles wide because she used to love things like this before her home got destroyed. Its been _so_ long since she’s played match maker and lucky for Peter she happens to have a surefire way to tell if Ned actually _does_ like him back. “You should ask him out, see how it goes,” she encourages.

Peter ducks his head a little, cheeks turning a little red. “I don’t know, I mean what if it goes badly?” he asks but Wanda laughs.

“Its pretty obvious to me that you and Ned are good friends so if it doesn’t work out I’m sure you guys can move past it,” she says. Ned had been quite protective of Peter when they met- he’d been suspicious of her motives based on information only he and Peter had really. Its not like he knows Wanda can read minds and therefore knows about Peter being Spiderman, he’d just been worried that somehow she knew and would use that to her advantage in some way. If he had been that worried for his friend with no evidence for those worries she suspects that a weird date proposal would make the whole relationship go sour.

“Okay,” Peter says. “Okay. How do you ask a person out?” he asks, obviously deferring to her expertise and he _does_ think she has expertise. For the first time since she’s met him her looks cross his mind and she realizes that he finds her attractive. She’s forgotten that she’s pretty to people who look at her, unused to focusing on what’s outside for some time.

Unfortunately for Peter, or maybe fortunately she’s not sure yet, most of her experience comes from movies. She leans forward in her seat, “well, what’s Ned like?” she asks. Thankfully Peter has a long list of interests and even reasons why so she grins, sure she can make something useful out of Peter’s carefully cataloged information on his friend.


	5. Chapter 5

JARVIS alerts him to Bucky’s recent internet searches and Tony tells the AI to keep it to himself out of respect for Bucky’s privacy, but it does make Bucky’s appearing in his lab with questions less jarring when it happens. Bucky takes up his usual residence by Tony’s side, kneeling by his chair without prompting. Normally Tony would appreciate the easy obedience but with Bucky he’s worried it’s a little _too_ easy. He’s talked to both Pepper and Hope though and they both seem to think that he’s worrying too much. Its good to have a sub’s opinion even if technically neither are strictly subs, even if he’s worried they’re wrong.

He pulls a pillow out from under his desk and sets it beside Bucky, who frowns at it. “On the pillow, Bucky,” he says before Bucky can protest, a touch of command in his voice and Bucky scrambles onto the pillow. He doesn’t like how fast that reaction was, feels more like Bucky was afraid not to follow the order than he was pleased to follow it, so he reaches out and runs his fingers through his hair. Bucky calms a little, tension ebbing away. “Did you come down to talk about something, or?” Tony asks, head tilted to the side. Bucky shuffles a little closer on his pillow, pressing his face into Tony’s leg. Sub speak for an apology. He sighs, “its okay, Bucky. I just don’t want you ignoring your discomfort, those floors are uncomfortable. I know because I’ve spent too much time on them,” he says. He can’t believe he hadn’t even considered fucking pillows down here. At least his room is carpeted, the lab is solid concrete and it can’t be comfortable, even to a super solider.

Thankfully Bucky breathes out a sigh of relief even if he continues to press his face to Tony’s thigh. “I was doing some research,” he murmurs, “JARVIS had to teach me how to, but I found some things.”

Tony lets out another sigh, “full disclosure- JARVIS ratted you out to me. I told him that I don’t need to know what you spend your spare time looking up on the internet, but I know you were looking into how modern Dom sub relationships work.”

He can feel Bucky’s brows draw together. “Your AI has that information?” he asks, an edge of that familiar suspicion he gets from Steve leaking in.

Ugh. “I mean yeah, but I don’t really need JARVIS if I actually want that information. If I really wanted to it’d take me maybe five minutes to figure out what weird anime some kid in India is reading right now- perks of being a tech genius. But I tend to stay out of people’s business if I don’t need to be in it,” he tells Bucky.

He lets Bucky process this for a moment before he speaks again. “I read… well, a lot of stuff on you,” he says and Tony winces. Yeah, there’s a lot to read. And probably a lot more that Bucky hasn’t even found yet. “But I read other things too. How does a relationship with two Doms even work?” he asks, jumping straight to questions.

Tony grins because this is a fun one. “Depends on your partner, but most of what I’ve done ends up kind of a weird way of one upping each other every time you get together. It’s less about submission and more about technique, the intricacies of what you do. Totally different than dating a sub.” Most subs, though not all, preferred the submission thing over the kinds of relationships Doms have with each other but there’s always an exception to the rule. Some Doms didn’t much like doing the Dom thing and subs are the same way with submission- everyone is different.

Bucky hums a little, “in the forties this kind of thing was unheard of. No one would even know what to do,” he says.

Tony happens to know that too partially thanks to Steve’s confusion and thanks to a few history lessons he’s had over the years. “Most of what has come of modern relationships is from the free love movement- the argument was that forcing Doms and subs to only date each other was restrictive and that the state shouldn’t have a place in who dates who. Linked in with a lot of early LGBT movement stuff too given that it was illegal to be gay as well. Point is some of those ideas got popular enough that people got curious and tested it out. Stuff like that happens all the time now and contrary to the beliefs of people who criticized the ideas at the time the sky is not falling.”

Its hard to believe that anyone even thinks that that would be a problem now, though he supposes that there are still people who push for ‘traditional’ values. Tony wonders if anyone who fights for ‘tradition’ knows that traditions have always changed to suit the time period they’re in or if no one has filled them in. He supposes that he at least gets the joy of filling Bucky in and he gets the feeling that Bucky wants to learn.

“Hmm. You’ve done stuff like that?” Bucky asks and Tony nods.

“My last partner was a switch so you know. Sometimes we switched.” Probably not as much as Pepper would like especially because he’s such a shit sub but it happened on a regular basis.

“In the forties people expected you to be one or the other. Guess that’s different,” he says.

“Eh. I mean technically yeah, but people still get confused when switches date because who’s the Dom and who’s the sub? The entire point is that they’re neither, but people still have a hard time accepting that. Especially when they date outside their orientation. Lots of switches like to engage both sides of their orientation but finding someone to do that with? Pretty difficult if they aren’t also a switch, so I hear.” Pepper used to talk about it, not often because he’s never really cared and he’s always been adventurous, but when people made stupid comments about it she’d get annoyed.

He can’t blame her, especially when people caught wind that he didn’t really mind playing sub once and while. When people brought it up it _always_ resulted in someone saying something stupid and Pepper didn’t like dealing with it. Tony had done his best but people like to think what they believe and a frankly quite shocking amount of people thought Pepper was borderline _abusing_ him just because she asked him to play sub sometimes. A completely illogical leap, but its not one people who aren’t celebrities get usually. Tony sometimes hates his celebrity status and the attention it brings.

“But you don’t really care?” Bucky asks, clarifying.

“Not particularly no. I mean I’m a shit sub, it just doesn’t come to me naturally but I don’t really attribute that to being a Dom so much as lifelong trust issues. But I don’t really mind playing the role, its kind of fun if I can manage to stop my brain from criticizing everything,” he says. He had been used to the way Dom’s work in relationships when he’d gotten with Pepper. She doled out a _ridiculous_ amount of punishments and he swears to god if he never has to watch The Real Housewives of whatever with her ever again it will be too soon. And that isn’t even the most creative _or_ the worst punishment she came up with. The worst goes to paperwork for sure though.

Bucky considers this for awhile, taking his time with this knowledge before responding. “Is… is that something you’re willing to try with me?” he asks eventually and Tony doesn’t mean to, he swears, but he laughs.

“Sorry, that was rude,” he says fast, “its just… really hard to imagine someone as passive as you in the role of Dom. Not that I’m unwilling to try- color me curious, Barnes, because that’s an odd request. Or one I consider odd from you, its not actually that weird in my experience,” he says, supposing he has five years of experience with Pepper to make that mostly normal.

“Hmm,” Bucky murmurs, “cool.”

*

Wanda suspects that Steve Rogers does not have a mind that’s easy to manipulate normally. But he’s worried about his Bucky and its not hard to turn it up a little, make it boarder on paranoia and control. Combine that with Bucky’s budding curiosity, which she turns up just enough to make him a pest, and it’s a simple recipe for disaster. She’s been listening to the Avengers fight amongst themselves all day. Steve is suspicious of Stark, who naturally dislikes Rogers anyways so she didn’t even _have_ to alter his mind, while Natasha is suspicious of Bucky, who’s feeling something more like love than need for Tony, who’s back at it with Steve, who’s now also into it with Natasha. Steve doesn’t like that Natasha is on Stark’s side, Stark claims he doesn’t even have a side, Steve tries to pull Bucky closer, Bucky resists with more determination than he would have before her meddling, Stark thinks its progress, Steve thinks its Stark, Natasha thinks Bucky is playing them all.

She drinks her coffee, listening in on her handiwork with pleasure buzzing in her mind. Divide and conquer and the Avengers are doing all the heavy lifting for her- morons. It does leave her with a little extra free time though and for that she’s grateful. Peter has been trying to get Ned to notice him but he thinks he’s stuck firmly in friend territory while Wanda thinks Ned just hasn’t had the opportunity to consider him as something else. Can’t blame the guy for that, really, they’ve been best friends for years.

“I don’t know to like… not be that,” Peter says, referring to being Ned’s friend.

Wanda snorts, throwing a bit of her sandwich bread at him. “You don’t need to stop being his friend, you’re supposed to be friends with people you date, its just got some extra perks. Like them paying half your rent and you not having to worry about finding a creepy roommate on Craigslist.” She’s read horror stories that she’s become somewhat addicted to after Peter showed her where to find them. She finds the stories especially amusing considering she has a lovely apartment with a great view and no roommates, free of charge.

Peter laughs, “I guess that’s true. But I don’t think he’s noticed that I mean things in a gay way not a friend way,” he says.

Her advice would be to just come out with it but Peter is shyer than she is. Or was, she supposes. “Maybe try things that are more explicitly… romantic?” she suggests. That could work though Ned appears to be particularly dense so maybe it won’t, she’s unsure.

Peter considers the advice though, had tilted to the side as thoughts fly by a mile a minute. “Think a candle lit dinner is romantic enough?” he asks. “Ned’s soul mate is garlic bread. Pretty sure we have that in common,” he says.

She shakes her head because garlic bread isn’t even that good and she knows Peter would disown her for even thinking that. But its not her fault its true. “That’s pretty heavy handed so yeah, seems like the kind of thing that would work. If it doesn’t honestly he is a lost cause because candle lit dinners are pretty… obvious.”

“But I don’t want to give up on him!” Peter says, distressed.

“Relax, he hasn’t failed to notice your signals yet. Just you know… be extra obvious,” she advises.

“How much more obvious can I _get_?” Peter asks, shaking his head. Truthfully Wanda is at a loss too.

*

Bucky is hunting in the fridge for juice contemplating his conversation with Tony when Steve walks in. He can anticipate Steve’s reaction but he remains silent mostly because he wants to be wrong. He doesn’t need yet another lecture on how Tony is horrible from him and he’s tired of listening to Natasha fight it out with Tony, who’s fighting it out with Steve, who’s trying to fight it out with _him_ over stupid things. But he doesn’t have any luck. “I know you’re just… trying new things I guess, but Tony isn’t a good choice,” Steve murmurs softly, like that will make Bucky more willing to listen.

It annoys him that Steve has spent so long trying not to step on his ability to make choices right until he makes one Steve doesn’t like. _Emotional manipulation_ \- the phrase flits across his mind and immediately he’s _incensed_. “Why is it that you spent so fucking long trying your best to keep your nose out of my business and now you’re wading eyeballs deep in it?” he snaps.

Stunned is probably the best way to describe Steve’s face at the moment. “I… I’m just trying to help,” he murmurs and that just pisses Bucky off more.

“You’re not trying to help, you’re trying to control me and I don’t want anything to do with that, so _stop,_ ” Bucky tells him.

Steve’s eyebrows draw together, “Bucky, I just don’t want to see you hurt,” he says, frowning as his eyebrows pull together.

“Well its your fault I’m even with Tony anyways,” Bucky says, frowns because he doesn’t know where that came from, and Steve looks _right_ confused.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Steve asks.

Bucky’s anger, which had taken a turn for the confused, comes back again because Steve isn’t stupid. He’s sure he can put two and two together he’s just being deliberately obtuse. “When I got back here I was fucking drowning- I don’t know how to live without HYDRA, I barely even remember running from you and then you threw me in here and refused to give me any kind of help learning how to be a person again. I _needed_ structure, I don’t know how to live without it so it’s _your_ fault I ended up with the only person willing to give it to me in this damn house.”

“ _What_?” a shocked, upset voice says from around the corner. He and Steve both turn to find Tony standing there, hurt clear on his features.

“Tony,” Bucky says, stepping forward but Tony steps back. Anger flashing brightly on his features and Bucky skitters back a little, unsure what to make of that and not willing to find out either.

“No, don’t you get to ‘Tony’ me- the only reason you’re with me is because I offered you a little structure? Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” he snaps.

“Tony,” Steve says, immediately jumping to Bucky’s defense, “calm down.”

Tony rolls his eyes, “oh fuck off Steve. So much for _him_ getting hurt huh? He gets what he wants and all I am is what I have to offer. Typical,” he mumbles, shaking his head sharply. Bucky wants to go forward, wants to tell Tony he’s wrong but he isn’t, not exactly. Yeah that’s why Bucky chose to spend more time with him than the others, because he’d offered a level of support everyone else didn’t, but that’s not why he stuck around. He doesn’t think. Or is it?

“Can you _not_ make this all about you?” Steve asks, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, sure, my relationship shouldn’t be about me. I’m sorry, I forgot that all you give a shit about is Bucky, never mind holding him responsible for his actions,” Tony snaps.

“He couldn’t help it!” Steve says in his defense.

“He’s not an idiot, Steve, he can determine that maybe starting a relationship with someone under false pretenses of genuine interest is a shitty thing to do. Why are you defending that?”

“Because _you_ should have known from the beginning that this was a stupid idea, its _your_ fault!” Steve snaps back.

“What the fuck am I Rogers, a god damn _mind reader_ , how the hell am I supposed to know Bucky’s motivations?” he asks.

Bucky watches them argue, eyes darting back and forth between the two, frozen for a few long moments before his body remembers to move and he flees the scene.

*

She hadn’t even intended to reveal Bucky’s motivations for his relationship with Stark at that moment but Wanda has learned to use an opportunity when she finds one. And this one was all but perfectly timed. So her plans to divide them all is working just fine- not its time to conquer. She has plans for each Avenger but she’s saving the best for last. Stark is bound to do something stupid when exposed to his own fears; he’s far too arrogant to see past his own emotions, and when he does, well. She’ll be there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The discussion Tony and Bucky have in this chapter isn't the end of things- there will be more discussion later just so y'all know. Also this chap introduces Charles Xavier because now the X-Men exist in this universe!

Natasha hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary until she had gone to pay a visit to one Phil Coulson and it had been obvious to her that once she was out of Manhattan her mind stopped running suspicious thoughts about Tony and Bucky on a near loop. And she’s all too familiar with what its like to have her mind manipulated so it tips her off immediately. Still, she’s always been fond of evidence and she’s sure that Tony will be a little more cooperative now that it turns out that she was apparently right about Bucky.

Phil frowns, “you’re sure about this?” he asks and she shakes her head.

“No, but that’s what Tony and his footage is supposed to prove,” she says. “If you see it than there’s something going on.” If not than she’s still sure something is going on but also the Avengers need to get over themselves collectively. They’ve been at each other’s throats for no real reason over the last couple weeks and even at their most uncooperative they don’t fight that often.

The most that’s happened is Tony cutting off almost all contact with Steve outside of necessary communication in the field. She suspects he knows about Bucky and his parents- which makes their relationship _curious_ to say the least, but she also happens to know that Steve hasn’t said anything. And Tony won’t take being denied that information with any grace.

They wait for some time for Tony to show up and when he does he looks surprisingly introspective. “Hey,” he murmurs. “I have that footage that you wanted.”

Natasha hands it off to Phil immediately. “So what exactly am I looking for?” he asks and she rolls her eyes.

“You know better than to ask that. Just go watch the videos and see if you see anything unusual. Or if you don’t,” she adds. And its entirely possible that he won’t though she’s sure something will feel off to him. He sighs and makes his way to another room while Tony sheds his jacket.

“This morning I was in a wretched mood,” he says, frowning in confusion.

Natasha nods, “and you aren’t now,” she states more than asks.

Tony nods. “I… well I’m still kind of upset about Bucky but I don’t know why I lost my shit the way I did, its not like he knows what healthy communication is. Shit, _I_ barely know what that is. So yeah starting a relationship under a few false pretenses was obviously a bad plan, but its partially our faults for not considering he needed support to begin with. That should have been obvious from the start. And besides that its also my fault for not making sure things started on a solid ground- given his past its my responsibility to make sure he knows how to communicate.”

She doesn’t entirely agree, Barnes can take responsibility for his own actions, but she also knows what its like to leave total control. His actions, however stupid, make sense. Tony is right to say they should have offered more support, but if Bucky had enough sense to seek out the structure he wanted himself than he had enough sense to tell them what he needed. Which she tells Tony, not that he listens. The man is stubborn and it annoys her. So she changes the subject. “You weren’t the only one with a sudden mood change when you left the Tower,” she tells him.

That earns her a frown, “so I’m guessing your less suspicious of Bucky now?” he asks and she nods.

“Turns out I was partially right, but my suspicion levels were far higher than they should have been. Bordering on paranoia,” she says.

Something clicks for Tony and he sighs, “guess that explains Steve. Guy has been up my _ass_ , acting like I’m abusing Bucky or something. He’s on about my past, blah, blah- it made no damn sense but if we’re being… I don’t know, manipulated somehow that’d make sense.”

It would, yes, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell him Steve would never approve of him and Bucky. She thinks he’s too attached to Bucky and she understands why, but she also thinks its valuable to step back and evaluate Tony from Bucky’s place rather than his own. She opens her mouth to say that Phil will let them know if anything is, in fact, happening when Phil shows up to inform them of his opinions himself.

“You guys need to see this,” he says and they exchange a confused look but they follow him into his workspace. “At first I thought you two were just acting like annoying teens for whatever reason but then I noticed this,” he tells them. He slows down the video, focuses on Tony’s face and goes through it frame by frame. It takes a couple frames for them to notice but when they do they exchange another look.

“Are… are my eyes _red_?” he asks, squinting. The video is a little grainy that close to his face and thanks to the brown the color blends a little with his natural eye color but yeah, they’re red.

“And,” Phil says, backing the video up and repeating the process on Natasha’s eyes, “so are hers. I thought hmm, weird but it’s a one off thing. Maybe whatever this was isn’t anything beyond whatever residual affects of fighting whomever the villain of the week was. You know I know how that is. So I fast-forwarded through the rest of the footage and,” he pulls up several pictures of each of the Avengers in the Tower. The argument Tony mentioned in the kitchen the other day shows that him, Steve, and Bucky all had red eyes at some point.

“So what the fuck? And how come we haven’t noticed? I’ve been in almost all these arguments- red eyes aren’t exactly the kind of thing to sneak past a person even in the heat of an argument,” Tony points out.

Natasha is a highly trained spy- like this would make it past her even if it did manage to stump Tony. But a person with blue eyes suddenly having red eyes is cause for notice spy or no. Only Tony’s eye color is dark enough to make the red look almost natural and even then in that argument in the kitchen they were all but _glowing_. So were Steve’s. Even the dark shade of Tony’s eyes can’t hide that.

“I wondered too but when I listened to snippets of your arguments a theme became clear. You all sound far younger than you actually are and even Stark isn’t that immature. This argument in the kitchen? Before Tony showed up it sounded like a bad rendition of ‘you’re not my dad, you can’t tell me what to do’. Only the argument was between two ninety five year olds. I think you’re being manipulated by someone and whoever it is they’re young,” he says.

Tony looks back to Natasha and she sighs, “so how do we deal with this?” she asks.

“Well, we should probably let Steve and Bucky know but if we do that whoever is in our heads is going to know we know and that’s likely going to result in an escalation. And youth might make that even worse, you know how fickle young people are,” Tony says like he isn’t more fickle than any teen she’s ever met. But he does make a point about Bucky and Steve, both about them knowing and about them knowing potentially causing problems.

“Phil, any advise?” she asks.

He shrugs, “call Charles?” he asks more than states.

*

Bucky hadn’t wanted to go when Steve tried to pry him out of his room but he does eventually get him to leave. The drive to wherever Natasha has squirreled herself away takes forever but its nice to leave the city. Or at least it feels nicer once they’re out of Manhattan. Steve seems to feel it too and does his best to keep up a flow of conversation but Bucky doesn’t really talk much not that Steve seems to mind.

Most of what he talks about it his adventures with the Avengers over the last couple years and it’s the first time Bucky has ever talked about Tony in an even vaguely positive light. Its mostly small things like his ridiculous plans that sometimes work out but usually result in him blowing himself up or something equally ridiculous.

“You don’t seem to like each other much, you and Tony,” he says eventually.

Steve sighs, “we… got off to the wrong foot and never really got back on the right track,” he says.

Seems like a stupid excuse to him, especially considering how much Steve used to do whatever it took to make something right, but there’s a lot that’s changed about Steve since Bucky knew him. Maybe that changed too. “He’s not as bad as you seem to think he is,” Bucky murmurs. “He’s patient. And gentle.”

When Steve laughs Bucky gives him a dirty look. “What? Tony Stark is _not_ patient. At _all_.”

“Maybe not with you,” Bucky mumbles. But he’s patient with Bucky and that’s all he cares about. Even if he accidentally botched this entire thing.

“How the hell did that even become a thing?” Steve asks, sparing a glance in Bucky’s direction.

Good question, one Bucky doesn’t have a full answer to. “I showed up in his lab and he decided to give me stuff to do. Kinda fell into things naturally after that,” he says. He isn’t sure when things went from that to Tony acting as an actual Dom and he doesn’t particularly feel the need to examine it. He cares about the results, not how he got there and he’d rather like to go back to the way things were. He’s twitchy without Tony’s guidance and its put him in a bad mood.

Steve remains silent for a long time before he speak again. “I still think you’re better off without him,” he says and Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Good thing I don’t care what you think,” he mumbles. “It isn’t your relationship and I don’t even think you know Tony. At all.” Or, as cliché as it sounds, not the way he does. But he’s seen plenty evidence to suggest that Tony spends a lot of time putting on a show so it doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable that he’s done that with Steve too. The more rational part of his mind wonders if that’s what he’s seeing too, another show, but he doesn’t think so. Its not entirely baseless either- he doesn’t act like Doms from Bucky’s time period or the ones from his own time period. You’d think if you’re putting on a show you’d go with what people are most likely to react positively too.

His rational mind tells him that he wouldn’t respond to either kind of Dom, but he has no idea what he likes anymore. Logically Tony couldn’t anticipate what kind of Dom he’d react best to so his ability to act out Bucky’s fantasies is greatly hindered if not impossible. Especially when he reacts to things he didn’t think he would.

“I’ve worked with him for years, Bucky. I have a better idea of who he is than you do,” Steve tells him, irritation niggling at his tone.

“Yeah, and you also hate each other. Like your opinion is a logical one, especially when it doesn’t match anything I know about Tony. Even if that wasn’t true I’ve known you my whole life and more often than not you’re a complete stranger to me. Knowing someone doesn’t mean knowing anything about them.” Some days he misses his best friend, the skinny scrappy kid from Brooklyn, but he suspects Steve misses him too. Bucky also misses who he used to be, before everything went to shit.

Steve doesn’t talk to him for the rest of the ride and when they get there they’re greeted by Natasha, Tony, and a man Bucky doesn’t know. Tony looks a little guilty and Bucky wants to go to him but he leaves it be, trailing behind Steve. Two steps behind, actually, and he hadn’t even realized he did that. He breaks the pattern, stealing a look over to Tony, who clearly notices and smiles a little to himself. Bucky smiles too, pleased that even if he screwed things up he still has an affect on Tony.

“You’re not going to like this,” Natasha mumbles to him when he steps through the door.

He frowns, giving her an alarmed look but a hand on his arm draws his attention away. He looks over to find Tony there, naturally stepping in to help and when he picks up on this he sighs a little to himself. “Its… not something you’re going to want to hear, I imagine, but it’ll also make a few things make sense about the last couple weeks,” he murmurs, guiding Bucky into the living room.

“What’s going on?” Steve asks, cutting straight to the point.

The man Bucky doesn’t know sighs, “well, we only half know what’s going on. We don’t know who or why, but we _do_ know someone has been manipulating your minds for at least the last three weeks but probably longer.” Steve asks questions, presumably asks for proof, but Bucky’s mind has started buzzing and his limbs have begun to tingle. Mind manipulation. He thought he left that behind with HYDRA but now it’s happening here too? Is there _any_ escape? Is there ever a point where his mind will belong only to him? Is it really too much to ask to keep people out of his mind?

“Bucky,” someone murmurs but it sounds far away, like they’re talking through water. “Bucky,” the person says again. “Hey, I know this is hard to here but I need you to come back to me, okay? Bucky?” He blinks a few times, breathing stuttering and he realizes that he’s not breathing right and almost panics more but Tony steps closer. “Bucky, hey, breathe. In and out,” he says softly. In and out, right, breathe. He manages, barely, to follow the instructions but it helps a little. He feels less lightheaded with air in his lungs.

“Are you-” Steve starts but Tony shushes him harshly.

“Just breathe,” he tells Bucky. “We’re going to figure this out, alright? We’ll make sure you’re okay.”

“How the fuck are you going to do that?” Bucky snaps, finding his voice suddenly. He’s used to a very physical, invasive type of manipulation and this person doesn’t even need that. How the hell do you fight something like that? You can’t fight someone who can control your mind.

“We… well _I_ have a friend. A rather powerful telepath friend who might be able to help us out a little. Truthfully we don’t know how to deal with telepathy but we’ve managed to fight literal gods and aliens that one time so I think we’ll be alright. Loki had a little mind control in there too so you know. This isn’t _totally_ foreign to us,” Tony says. He’s talking to himself more than Bucky by the time he’s finished that rant but it does, in a weird way, make Bucky feel better. Not much better, he still thinks they’re fucked, but at least someone else thinks they aren’t.

“Worst come to worst there’s always cognitive recalibration,” Natasha says and Bucky frowns.

“And how do you manage that?” Steve asks, saying what Bucky is thinking.

Natasha grins, “hit ‘em in the head real hard. They usually come back normal. Its how I got Clint back from Loki,” she says, looking pleased with herself. Bucky shifts closer to Tony, deciding he doesn’t like her much.

“Hey,” Tony murmurs, “come with me.” He spares a look over his shoulder to Steve but he walks away. Bucky only pauses for a moment before he follows, also looking back at Steve, who’s eyebrows draw together in confusion but Bucky shrugs a little. He has no idea what’s going on either. He follows Tony into a small room and Tony turns, sighing. “First of all I’m sorry for how I reacted to uh- our argument in the kitchen. I should have kept my cool.”

Bucky shrugs, “kinda had that coming.”

“No,” Tony says firmly, “you didn’t. But you should have told us you needed support instead of starting something I don’t think you’re ready for and dragging me into it.” He’s hurt; Bucky can hear it in his voice.

He sighs, “I… know I should have said something but I didn’t know how and you- you’re a natural Dom it felt nice. But then I actually liked you too and maybe that’s not how things started but that’s how it is now.” How he’d like it to stay but he did something stupid and Tony has the right to walk away. He probably would, he doesn’t like the idea of finding out that his relationship started with feelings that had nothing to do with him personally. Most people wouldn’t like being used for what they can do rather than who they are and Tony is not an exception.

Tony frowns, “shouldn’t you have like… freaked out over the guy thing? I mean you grew up in the forties,” he points out.

Bucky shrugs, “I was also in the army. Lots of people do things they wouldn’t normally because they want comfort or love. And also where I lived in Brooklyn had a lot of queer people, not like I didn’t know they existed. I used to be jealous of them,” he says. Because they were freer in their exploration of themselves than he’d ever been. Even in the army people sought out a specific kind of comfort, not real love or real relationships.

Tony hums a little, “guess that’s why Steve didn’t freak out about marriage equality,” he says.

“What, did you think gay men and women were invented in modern times?” Bucky asks, smiling a little and Tony laughs.

“Of course not, but I didn’t think gay people were something Steve had extensive exposure to and its not like we talk to each other often if ever,” Tony points out.

Curious, Bucky decides to ask Tony what happened between him and Steve. “How come you two seem to hate each other?” he asks. Steve’s answer was evasive and he wonders if Tony’s will be too.

Tony sighs, “we… butted heads immediately. The first thing he did was insult me and I dished it right back and its never really stopped. We work well together when we need to but we don’t ever get along if the world isn’t at stake.”

“He insulted you?” Bucky asks and Tony nods.

“Took issue with my attitude, told me I didn’t take anything seriously and that I wasn’t a hero. Asked me what I was without my suit and I told him that he was little more than a science experiment and that everything special about him came from a bottle. Didn’t really set the tone for a warm and fuzzy relationship,” he says.

“Didn’t you _build_ the suit?” Bucky asks and Tony nods.

“Then obviously that isn’t what makes you special. And Steve was special before he got the serum. I don’t really know about after,” he says honestly. “I… think he lost his way. I miss him, who he was before.” He wonders if Steve regrets the serum or if he thinks his old identity was a worthy sacrifice considering what he did for the war. He’s a big part of the reason they won, after all. Bucky wonders if they would have won without him and decides it doesn’t matter. People don’t take well to tyrants and someone will always stand up to them, Steve just happened to be the poster boy for those people in that particular war.

Tony tilts his head to the side, “he was different?”

Bucky nods. “He was a lot scrappier, kinda reminds me of a pissed off dandelion except he had real bad allergies so he’d sneeze around any kind of weed. Or dust, or perfume, or pretty much anything honestly. We used to joke that he was allergic to the inside and the outside and most things people eat. But he never let that get him down much, he didn’t even let tuberculosis slow him down too much,” he says, shaking his head. He used to have to go fetch Steve from wherever he made his way to before he went and infected a bunch of other people all the time. Steve never took well to others taking care of him though and even sick he tried his best to avoid feeling like a burden. Eventually he’d been bed ridden and almost died but Steve really is too stubborn for death, even now.

“Seems like he was more fun then,” Tony says. “But that’s besides the point. The reason I pulled you in here, aside from our relationship problems, is because I think its best if you stay here. Aside from the obvious mental manipulations not being good for you in particular we won’t have you fighting whoever this is with us anyways. You’ll be safe here with Coulson.”

“Did you talk to Steve about this?” he asks, wondering when Steve could have convinced Tony this was a good idea. He wonders if he can talk Tony out of it.

“No, but for once I think we’ll actually be on the same page about this,” he says.

Well Bucky isn’t on that page but he doesn’t think he’ll make headway on that right now. So he sighs. “I… I know I started things off not… well between us, and I know I should have said something sooner. Not that I would have, probably, but that’s because I really do like you as a person. I think you’re compassionate, and generous, and patient, and I like how I get to watch your intelligence work, and I like your sense of humor. I don’t… don’t want to lose what we have,” he murmurs.

Tony considers him for a long moment, takes a step forward and Bucky can’t help the hopeful look on his face that draws Tony in a step further. But then he stops and Bucky deflates a little. Tony sighs and takes another quick two steps further and looks up at Bucky. “Tell me what you want,” he says.

He has no idea what Tony is looking for but he stands there patiently, waiting for Bucky’s response. “Come on, what is it that you want?” he asks, shifting a little closer and yeah, he could go for that. He’s missed Tony, curling up with him, being pet by him. Being near him in general. “Its okay,” he says softly, “tell me.” Tony’s lips twitch up a little at the corners and Bucky licks his lips, considering Tony’s slight grin. He opens his mouth to respond, then shuts it, then opens it again before abandoning the action. Instead he reaches out to Tony, settling a hand on his hip and pulling him in slightly.

Tony goes easily, “good,” Tony murmurs, “that’s what I want to see.” Amazing, Bucky thinks, that he can make Bucky’s own actions into a way to Dom him. But he likes it. He studies Tony, the hand on his hip, and what he wants. What _does_ he want? When he flexes his hand on Tony’s hip Tony smiles again and Bucky finally figures it out. He’s wanted it for a long time, wondered why Tony hadn’t done it himself, and now he wonders if maybe it was a purposeful decision to wait on Tony’s part. But he’s done with waiting and Tony is the one who asked him what he wanted anyways. He figures its okay to lean forward, pressing his forehead to Tony’s. The soft puff of air he lets out, almost a gasp, at least tells Bucky that Tony wants this too so he leans in the rest of the way and kisses him softly.

When Tony pulls away entirely way too soon he lets out a small noise of protest, “shush,” Tony tells him, “I have been waiting _forever_ for this.”

“Why’d you wait so long?” Bucky asks, only half caring about the answer. He’d rather Tony kiss him again but Tony laughs.

“I wanted it to be your choice. I didn’t want to push you into anything and who the fuck cares, come here,” he says, pulling Bucky back into a kiss. He goes happily, letting Tony take the lead and he does so easily. Tony curls an arm around his waist, pulling him in close as he stands on his toes, leaning into Bucky’s space. His other hand finds its way to his hair, winding his fingers through it and tilting his head the way he wants it. Bucky shivers, letting Tony do what he wants, _wanting_ Tony to do what he wants with him. Tony lets out a soft moan at the action, nipping at Bucky’s bottom lip.

Bucky lets out a pleased noise and Tony nips at his lip again, drawing out another small moan when the fucking door opens, interrupting them. “Is this seriously the time, Stark?” Steve snaps.

Tony looks irritated and a little dazed but he regains his wits quickly. “Sure is, wanna join?” he asks snarkily.

“No,” Bucky says immediately, earning a surprised look from Steve and Tony both. “What? He’s basically my brother. _Ew_.” Steve looks offended by this but Bucky can’t imagine why when he knows he agrees. Probably because Tony looks amused.


	7. Chapter 7

Charles frowns when he looks over the footage. Tony wants to know what the hell that means but thankfully Charles answers. Or maybe he just read Tony’s mind, who the hell knows. Though he has been reliably informed that Charles has better things to do than read people’s minds all the time so maybe he just anticipated that they all wanted answers.

“I’ve never met a telepath who leaves a trace behind like this,” he says, British accent lilting his tone. “Seems a bit reckless to use power like that when other’s can quite literally see you do it.”

“We’ve gathered that this person is likely young,” Coulson says like that helps. Tony personally thinks it doesn’t because their counterpart here is obviously intelligent. And he’s the poster boy for youth not equating to stupid.

Charles nods regardless. “That would make sense. I would think an older telepath with this kind of power would learn how to avoid the potential for proof of their involvement. Though none of you saw this in the moment, correct?” he asks and they all nod. “Maybe they don’t know this happens then, but that would make no sense- I’m sure they’ve been face to face with someone they’ve manipulated at some point, that would be imperative to even _learn_ how to read a mind,” he muses out loud.

Tony frowns, “I thought telepaths could just _do_ that,” he says. Or at least that’s what he’s gathered from Charles though its been a long time since they’ve discussed it. Hell, Charles never even mentioned it until enhanced people started getting actual press post Tony’s becoming Iron Man. Which makes Tony wonder when and more importantly _how_ Charles got that ability but so far he’s been quiet on that front. Mostly he just advocated for the rights of enhanced people, generally reminding the public that they really aren’t more dangerous than anyone with a gun. What he doesn’t say is that America doesn’t regulate those very well but he doesn’t have to.

That and he makes a point when he talks about most of the world’s tragedies coming from the power of people who _aren’t_ enhanced in some way. Needless to say people don’t like him, but they also don’t seem to wonder where he got his power to begin with. Tony would think that was purposeful on Charles’ part considering he knows the actual extend of his power but Charles isn’t much the controlling type.

Charles shrugs, “sometimes, yes. I could, but I also needed to learn how to control it too. God knows I don’t want to go around listening to people daydream about sex, whine about their jobs, or think about their pets at home all day. It’d go insane. I highly doubt this person is all that different and part of learning to control your power is learning the extent of it. Do you have any idea how powerful this person is?” he asks.

Tony and Natasha exchange a look because no, not really. But Natasha is the one who speaks. “Must be reasonably powerful- I didn’t notice anyone in my head and neither did Bucky. We’re both rather aware of our minds,” she says but Charles laughs.

“Oh you wouldn’t notice a telepath in there unless we were actively scrambling things around. Its quite like having ears that can hear the mind too- I overhear mental conversations all the time without ever touching the mind. Though you _do_ make a good assessment of power level given that this person _does_ interact with the mind and seems to be quite adept at it. And all of your minds are powerful and naturally suspicious, I can feel the natural barriers around them,” he says.

“Can that keep you out?” Bucky asks softly. Tony doesn’t know if Charles winces due to Bucky’s thoughts, which can’t be pleasant, or if it’s due to his answer.

“No. Well yes, but not with someone as powerful as the telepath you’re dealing with. And not for a telepath as powerful as me. Low level telepaths can be kept out with a natural barrier though,” he says gently.

“So what _does_ keep a telepath as powerful as you out anyways?” Tony asks. He never considered that before but there’s got to be something, right?

“Vibranium, as far as I’ve discovered,” he says and Tony makes an irritated noise.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m going to have to melt down Steve’s shield into fucking _hats_?” he asks and Bucky lets out a small giggle at that.

Steve gives him a dirty look, “you’re not melting my shield into hats,” he says.

“Clint is gunna be _pissed_ he missed the vibranium hats,” Natasha mumbles, snickering a bit.

Steve gives her an offended look, “we’re not making my shield into hats!”

“Relax Steve, it’ll be like a little shield on your head, you’ll still have it,” Bucky says, grinning as Steve gives him a dirty look too.

“Please give them a better solution,” he says to Charles.

“Well, another telepath can keep someone out too, but I’m not certain I’ll be able to do that without an adequate read of power,” he says.

Tony snorts, “that’s pretty modest, Charles.” He raises an eyebrow and Charles sighs, not looking impressed but Tony has his own methods of catching out your local telepath and he happens to know that Charles has a fucking _incredible_ range. Like the entire state wide kind of range or better.

“You never know,” he says primly but Tony damn well knows that, on the off chance Charles _isn’t_ more powerful than their current telepath he’ll definitely be able to tell them how powerful the telepath is.

“Great, no vibranium hats,” Steve says like _that’s_ what’s important here.

“Might make ‘em just in case,” he says just to be an ass. And also strategically it is useful to have a plan B.

*

“For the record,” Natasha tells him, “I still think this is a bad idea. You and Bucky,” she clarifies.

“For the record,” Tony says, “I don’t care.” If he isn’t going to listen to Steve’s whining and crying, of which there’s been plenty, than he’s not going to listen to her. That and he’s a big boy, he can make his own choices. If this is a bad idea than fine, he’ll deal with it later.

Nat sighs, “he isn’t ready for a relationship,” she says.

“That’s his choice,” Tony points out. Its hardly like he forced Bucky into something- he’s gone pretty far out of his way to _avoid_ that.

“Are you saying that because you think its true or because you want it to be true?” she asks.

“I’m saying that because Bucky made it abundantly clear that that’s what he wants and coming from someone who doesn’t exactly broadcast his wants and needs that’s a big thing. Now if you’ll butt _out_ of my relationship I have things to do. Like design vibranium hats,” he says. He wonders if Steve’s shield is big enough for that, and how thick the metal would have to be but he doubts Charles tested that when he stumbled across that information.

“If you actually melt Steve’s shield down he’s going to be pissed,” Nat tells him.

“If I don’t we’re all vulnerable to attack. Its not like I can’t melt them all back into his shield later,” he points out. “Its not like Charles has a better solution.”

“So much for learning how to deal with a telepath,” she mumbles.

Tony rolls his eyes because they already knew telepaths weren’t the kinds of people you’d like to tangle with in a fight. They aren’t any worse off than they were before and they now know vibranium keeps them out so _technically_ they have more information than before. Its just that they don’t really have access to that resource for it to be useful. “If we could get close enough we could probably fry their brain. I mean that’ll work on anyone but sneaking up on a telepath is impossible, I’ve tried like a million times with Charles.” And back before Erik went batshit they used to try different things together. Including mentally shrieking at Charles to distract him but none of it worked. Frankly their experiments were more than a little unethical but Charles seemed to handle it well all things considered.

“Then why even suggest- you know what, we need a real plan. Something that might at least net us information about who we’re dealing with if anything,” Natasha says.

He sighs, “best I’ve got is Charles wiping our minds and sending us back for observation,” he says. It would prevent their telepath from knowing about them so Charles can gather information and he happens to know Charles can give back what he takes.

Natasha, however, looks shocked. “He can _do_ that?” she asks.

And a hell of a lot more stuff she’d probably find terrifying but Charles isn’t much of a villain so Tony isn’t too worried. If he wanted the world he’d have it. “Yeah, and it’s probably the best we’ve got right now.”

*

Bucky is _pissed_. Probably more pissed than he’s been about most anything in his life aside from that time he found out Steve let some random doctor experiment on him so he could feel relevant to the war effort. “You’re letting someone _erase your memories_?” he all but shrieks at Tony. He looks surprised but more in a way that suggests he’s surprised Bucky is talking to _him_ like that, not that he’s yelling. That reaction goes to Steve, whose jaw just hit the ground.

“In a controlled environment, for a purpose, and temporarily, yes,” Tony tells him in a matter of fact tone. Bucky swears he sees red for a moment before he manages to come back to himself.

“Are you insane?” he snaps.

“Depends on who you ask,” Tony quips. “Okay, Jesus, take a breath Bucky _what_ has gotten into you?” he asks when Bucky balks.

Across the room Natasha sighs. “For a genius you consistently prove yourself stupid,” she tells him. “The man was violently tortured for seventy years and a huge part of that involved stripping him of his memories and here you are doing exactly that. Its not surprising that it’s a hot button for him,” she says. He’d like to tell her that he can speak for himself but he doesn’t actually have anything to add to that. Plus she put his feelings to words in a way he hadn’t been able to because yes, that is exactly the problem.

“Why would you do that?” he asks, surprised when his own voice sounds small, breaking at the end of his question.

Tony slumps a little, several emotions playing across his features before he steers him away from the room full of people. Not that it’d matter in regards to the telepath. “Bucky, I get your concern as much as I can working only on an intellectual understanding of what happened to you. But this isn’t the same and I’m sure you’re aware of the limitations of trying to catch someone who knows what you’re thinking. The only way to attempt this is if this telepath has no idea I already know they exist. It’s not unusual for the Avengers to go out of town and Charles can fake memories easily enough. We have no idea if this telepath will be able to pick them out as fake or not but right now it’s the best way we have to figure out who this person is,” he says calmly- rationally.

Its not a bad plan Bucky knows at least in an intellectual sense but he can’t help the panic clawing at his throat and he doesn’t know how to explain that to Tony. “Charles seems to be able to do a lot of mental manipulation. Ever wonder _how_ he knows he can do any of these things?” Bucky asks softly. Because knowing you can create false memories seems like a highly specialized skill even for a telepath, and so is being able to give and take memories.

Tony lets out a small laugh, “he learned to in a controlled environment where people volunteered- I know because I was _there_. An old friend of ours Erik and I used to do a lot of mental screaming at him in an attempt to sneak up on him. Never worked and it was kind of unethical, but still. Experimentation requires a rather important element that you didn’t get with HYDRA- informed consent. We all knew what Charles could do to an extent. Our experiments had been more finding a limit to that power.”

“What was it?” he asks and Tony frowns. “The limit,” Bucky clarifies.

When Tony looks away for a moment Bucky doesn’t get a good feeling. “Distance, maybe. But even then… Charles has an incredible range, nothing we’ve ever seen before and trust me I know a fair amount about enhanced people. Don’t look so worried Bucky; I know what Charles can do better than almost anyone else on this planet. If he wanted to take over the world or whatever there is almost nothing that could stop him. The fact that he’s never even tried tells me everything I need to know.”

Maybe Tony has faith in that but all that tells Bucky is that Charles has had time to make an airtight plan.

*

Charles has never quite encountered a mind like Bucky’s. When he’d first run into him his mind was so subdued it almost felt like it was on mute, something minds simply don’t do, but when Tony had outlined his plan his mind went from barely there to ringing high with anxiety and suspicion. It’s not at all what he’s used to and if Bucky weren’t so adverse to him he’d inquire further, but he knows that wouldn’t go over well.

He finds Bucky standing on Phil’s porch looking irritated presumably because Steve, Natasha, and Tony have all been sent back to the Tower with their minds wiped. Charles is keeping track of them all, something that’s a slight pain to do because he’s used to only tracking one or two minds at a time. It’s not something he’s unable to do though. “If it makes you feel better Tony isn’t taking to the wiped memories well. Never has.” Bucky simply gives him a dirty look and Charles sighs. “Tony is… its just who he is, he’s never taken to barriers well. Tell him something is impossible, he’ll make it possible and has on several occasions. Tell him he can’t do something and he will. Try and take a memory away and he knows something is missing because pushing against the tide is what he does.”

“How will this random telepath react to _that_?” Bucky mumbles, glaring at him again.

“Not sure,” Charles says honestly. “But Tony is the liability here. Steve-” he goes to say that Steve _wants_ to forget but that’s harsh and it isn’t the memory of finding out that there’s a telepath manipulating them that he wants to forget. Its everything past World War Two when he feels he lost all that he found meaningful, even his Bucky despite him being right here. “Steve doesn’t hold the same natural resistance, and Natasha is aware something isn’t quite right but she’s naturally a more strategic person. She’ll feel the barrier out and try and peel it back. Tony will try and take a mental sledge hammer to it.”

Bucky smiles a little, a small thread of happiness flickering through the anxiety fogging his thoughts. “Will you be able to feel that?” Bucky asks and Charles nods.

“I can feel him trying to find a way through already. His mind, for not having any extraordinary capabilities beyond his intelligence, holds an incredible natural resistance to this type of thing. That’s just the type of person he is.” He’s known Tony a long time and the one thing Tony does more than anything else is question. When he hears a rule he wants to know why, and if the why isn’t good enough he questions that too and that’s often. Science, social norms, business- if there’s a status quo he’s naturally inclined to utterly disregard it. That natural resistance to the rules that govern his life extends to the way his mind can and can’t be manipulated.

It’s rare that someone will be that adverse to the world around them and, by extension, external manipulations, but Tony has always been exceptional. The best way to get to him, as several people in his life including their new telepath have proven, is to further convince him of something he’s already sure is true. The catch is that he can’t come to question it later because if he does he’ll think and over think and then you’re back to square one.

Bucky considers this for a moment. “Why is he even trying to break through? I thought you said they wouldn’t have any memory of what happened here anyways, that’d it’d be replaced by something else.”

Charles sighs, “I can take a memory and hide it and I can replace it too, but I can’t convince a mind that is naturally suspicious of everything that seems even slightly out of the ordinary that the memories are real and nothing has been tampered with.”

“Then why the hell did that other telepath seem to have no problem with this?” Bucky snaps, irritated.

“Because that telepath was only heightening things that were already there. Steve and Tony already dislike each other, you already cared for Tony, and Natasha was already suspicious of your relationship. Turning up the dial on things that already exist isn’t as difficult as fabricating things out right. And its you that’s made him suspicious. He can feel that he’s missing something after your argument in the kitchen and its irritating him that he can’t remember what.” He keeps trying to dig around for the thing he can feel is gone and Charles has had to pull his memory further back into his mind but if Tony is determined enough, and Charles has experience to know he _is_ , he’ll find it eventually.

Bucky seems to stir a little at that. “ _I’m_ what’s making him suspicious?” he asks.

Charles nods. “Steve too but that’s mostly because he’s worried he’s lost you again instead of fully buying that you’re doing recon on something called Project X, Tony suggested it and I’m assuming Steve has memories of making the plan. He keeps trying to figure out where you’d fit in tactically but my manipulations have prevented him from looking much beyond some slight confusion and his natural anxiety of losing you.” He figures Tony, Natasha, and Steve all have detailed memories of whatever it is and Tony knows how his power works. He’ll make the right adjustments and he and Tony both know that minds will make the natural leaps to fully connect the dots.

“Why haven’t you tried to… I don’t know, take over the world or something?” Bucky asks, surprising Charles with the out of left field question.

He frowns. “I don’t really want to,” he says honestly. “What could I possibly do with the world? I’d like to make it a better place but I can’t say it’d be ethical to force people into it via telepathy. Plus there’s now the guarantee that my version of the best world isn’t what’s actually best anyways.” The problem with having the power to make people do things- he could certainly edit out all the bad traits of humanity but who’s to say that his standards are actually what’s best? Or anyone else’s? That and if everyone thinks exactly as he does there’s no progress to be made- everyone would believe they’re in a perfect utopia and frankly Charles finds that rather terrifying to think about.

Bucky hums a little. “For the record, I don’t trust you. But you probably already know that,” he says, walking off then. He does know that yes, but truthfully he’s never been fond of how he knows that anyone feels anything. He’s always rather resented his gift and Erik, for all his preaching about revolution, isn’t very fond of it either. People like their privacy, Charles supposes, but he likes their privacy too. Hearing hundreds of voices in his head at once all day every day is maddening and for once he’d just like some damn peace and quiet.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mental manipulations from Wanda here- specifically that 'worst fears' thing she did in canon.
> 
> Also you know when you have an inspired moment in writing? I got that here at the end of the chap so I hope y'all like it lol.

Tony’s forgetting something, he knows he is, but at the moment he’s too pissed off at Steve to give a damn. “Why the hell is it that you think I’m completely comprised of my mistakes? I can do fifty million things right but it’s the one time I’m wrong that defines me. You don’t do that with your own actions,” he snaps. There’s something to that too, some reason he’s not supposed to snap at Steve but that nagging feeling in the back of his head disappears when Steve speaks.

“I treat everyone equally Stark, you just expect special treatment,” he says and Tony lets out a loud noise of disbelief.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me? You ride my ass like your dick belongs in it and you don’t even have the _balls_ to tell me Bucky killed my fucking parents!” He frowns, knowing damn well he hadn’t intended to let that information slip because he’d been waiting to see how long Steve would wait to tell him. So far it’s been a little over two years and now he just lets the cat out of the bag himself? What the hell?

Steve looks shocked, “you _know_ about that?” he asks and then his face twists a little. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You slept with your parents’ murderer? God, you have _no_ morals.”

Oh as if _he_ has the right to talk about morals! “You were the one who purposefully kept that knowledge from me so how the hell was I supposed to know? I only found out hunting through HYDRA files and found that particular Winter Soldier mission by chance. And if you _must_ know I haven’t even slept with Bucky! We only kissed that time you went and ruined our moment,” he snaps. That was a good kiss too but _no_ , Steve has to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong and mess it up just like Tony does all the time. He frowns because its not an untrue assessment of his actions, but it is one that’s come out of left field.

The look on Steve’s face totally changes from anger to shock to pleading all in a matter of seconds. “Tony, you _need_ to understand that it wasn’t really Bucky. He was under HYDRA’s control, he never meant to do any of those things!” He looks panicked, like he’s sure Tony will fly off the handle at any moment and that’s just fucking confusing.

Tony squints at him, “ten seconds ago I had no morals for sleeping with the guy- can you pick a bitch speed and stay on it?” he asks. Wait, what the hell kind of insult is _that_? Sounds like some weird shit the kids would come up with and god, he’s old if he’s thinking stuff like that. But then he has been dying greys out of his hair for almost a year not that he’ll ever admit that.

Steve frowns, “I never said that.”

“You did so! I can’t believe you’re seriously denying this,” he says, shaking his head.

“I wouldn’t say something like that- how would you lack morals for sleeping with- wait, you’ve slept together?” Steve asks and Tony rolls his eyes.

“No and I told you that- you know what, J, pull up the evidence,” he tells the AI, walking over to the cupboard as the video pops up.

“The cupboard is a computer?” Steve asks and Tony gives him an annoyed look.

“Every reflective surface in his house is a computer Steve. I don’t like leaving my work in the lab and this way it can follow me around. Play the video,” he tells the AI.

JARVIS complies silently and Steve frowns as he watches himself say exactly what Tony told him he did except he feels the need to crowd into Tony’s space, reaching over his head to pause the video. “Why are my eyes like that?” he asks and Tony turns to look at Steve’s face. He’d been prepared to tell him he was nuts but his eyes are- he blinks as the memory fuzzes and he can feel himself reach out towards the screen on the cupboard. When he realizes his own intentions he frowns, pulling his hand back because he can’t just _erase_ evidence he had been right and also why are Steve’s eyes red and-

*

Charles looks pained and Bucky is suspicious. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks in a somewhat waspish tone.

Charles, who is usually patient, loses some of that for a moment to give Bucky a dirty look. “What’s wrong is that this damn telepath keeps trying to irritate Tony and Steve’s existing bad relationship with each other and Tony is consistently pushing back against my manipulations _plus_ I have to keep the other telepath from _noticing_ those manipulations. Its not easy when I’m also attempting to gather information on this telepath- who’s a woman, by the way.”

Bucky frowns, “how do you know that?” he asks. As far as he knows Charles is only in Tony, Steve, and Natasha’s minds.

He sighs, “best kept telepath secret- if you make a connection to a person they have a connection to you too but most people don’t know how to exploit it. In this case, though, her connection to Tony and Steve in particular allows me to touch her mind too,” he explains.

Sounds exhausting to Bucky and Charles gives him a knowing look he doesn’t appreciate. “So how is this information useful?” he asks.

“Telepaths aren’t exactly infinite,” Charles says, frowning like he doesn’t understand where that question came from. For all he knows that’s exactly what Charles thinks. Its not like Bucky is the mind reader.

“I doubt they have ‘telepath’ stamped to their foreheads either. Knowing this is woman narrows it down to what, a theoretical fifty one percent of the population give or take?”

Charles rolls his eyes, “for a spy you’re very bad at this,” he mumbles. “Our telepath has been sticking to a strict routine- it shouldn’t be that difficult to find a woman who’s been doing the same thing for weeks, potentially months, at a time,” he points out.

“So every woman in the immediate area with a job? Everyone has a routine, Charles, this doesn’t narrow things down.” And he knows that because, as a spy, he actually _is_ good at this kind of thing. Most people have a routine because most people have a job that requires them to keep one. Even on days off people settle into routines so this hardly sets this telepath apart from literally anyone else.

“And what else would you do to narrow things down?” Charles asks, irritation still prickling at his tone.

“Look for things that actually make the telepath unusual. Maybe she her behavior is odd, or her pattern of movement, maybe something she does indicates she’s a telepath- literally anything apart from ‘woman with routine’.” That’s far too wide of a scope to consider looking for anything useful though he supposes Charles might be able to gather more information on their telepath before they actually have to find her.

“And what exactly would indicate that someone is a telepath?” Charles asks.

Bucky shrugs, “I don’t know, I haven’t looked into it. Clearly she isn’t opposed to just manipulating people to do what she wants, I’m sure it shows somewhere in her life,” he rationalizes, not really understanding why Charles is pushing the subject anyways. Its not like he’s got a better solution at the moment.

“I take it you found something on the telepath?” Phil asks, breaking the tension in the room with his arrival. Bucky gives Charles e brief dirty look before he walks away, making his way to the space he’s currently occupying.

*

Tony _swears_ he’s going to throw Steve off a roof or something. He’s been irritating the hell out of him all day until he finally broke down and just left. There’s something else about the afternoon that niggles at his mind, something about the cupboard, but he elects to ignore it in favor of his irritation with Steve. When he gets back into the penthouse he finds Steve there like a looming like a bad reminder of Tony’s lingering hatred towards him instead of just going away.

“What happened this afternoon?” Steve asks and Tony shrugs, unwilling to answer the question. “Tony, I’m being serious. What happened this afternoon? With the cupboard?” he asks to clarify and Tony turns to face him.

“What do you remember?” he asks, wondering how Steve could know about that too.

Steve’s eyebrows draw together, “well, we were arguing,” he says, stopping there.

“And?” Tony prompts.

He shrugs, “nothing much after that. I just remember being surprised and something about evidence… I asked JARVIS to pull up the footage but he said you deleted it.”

Deleted? Tony snorts, “well that’s an easy fix,” he says, wandering over to the nearest reflective surface and calling up today’s camera footage from the kitchen.

“That’s a computer?” Steve asks, staring at the hallway mirror in shock.

“Every reflective surface in his house is a mirror, I don’t like leaving my work in the lab and this way it can follow me around wherever I am,” he says. He gets the distinct feeling that he’s told Steve this before but he can’t remember when.

“Oh,” Steve murmurs. “Creepy.” Tony gives him a dirty look for that but resumes finding the video he supposedly deleted. He’s about to find the footage that he’d stored, not deleted, elsewhere in his files when the power cuts out and he swears.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he mumbles more to himself than anyone else.

“Should we check that out?” Steve asks.

Tony resists the urge, barely, to tell him how much of an idiot he was for asking something so stupid. “Guess so. Meet me down there,” he says as his backup generators kick in. Seems a few of those are out too though since only some stuff comes back on. Hmm. Thankfully the elevators seem to be running fine so he takes that down Steve-free. It’s nice to have him out of his damn hair. When he gets to the basement level though nothing seems to be amiss. He considers his options for a moment before his vision blurs and something else replaces his control panels.

The first thing he notices is how _cold_ it is wherever he’s gone. He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns, noting the dark blue tones that seem to permeate everything before his eyes fall on what he thought, for a moment, was a mountain. When he looks closer though he notices rocks there, yes, but it’s the bodies that catch his eye. Ultimately its Steve’s pale skin that draws his attention, and the way his eyes seem to stare into nothing. He takes a step forward, towards Steve’s- toward whatever the hell is going on when movement to his left catches his eye.

Bucky almost blends in with his surroundings wearing black like he had when he’d still been with HYDRA but there’s dirt covering his features and hair too. He’s obviously been in a battle of some kind but it’s the fact that he’s kneeling that gets Tony. “Bucky,” he says, running over and throwing himself down in front of him. “Jesus, what the fuck happened?” he asks but Bucky refuses to look up. That’s not unusual for him but this isn’t the time either, he needs to know what the hell is happening here and how to fix it _fast_. “Bucky,” he says again, forcing his voice to be calm even when he’s edging closer to panic, “ _please_ tell me what happened.”

He finally looks up then, hurt and betrayal written across his features. “Why did you do this to us?” he asks and Tony jerks back, shocked.

“Do _what_? What did I do? How do I fix it?” he asks, mind racing through the possibilities.

Bucky shakes his head. “You’re too late for that,” he says, slumping into the rocks he’s been using to prop himself up.

“Bucky,” Tony says, leaning forward to try and help him, to do _something_ but he knows he’s too late when Bucky lets out a final shudder. “No. No, no, no, no,” he says, standing. What the _fuck_ is going on? How the hell is he supposed to fix this? Its his fault, he can feel that now, but he doesn’t understand how and he has less idea on how to fix it. He looks around wildly, _desperately_ and the scene finally looks familiar to him.

The sky is dark with stars glittering here and there to break up the black, but the light is coming from a small hole near the top of the darkness, revealing the blue skies and soft clouds he _knows_ is earth. Wherever they are its not their home planet.

It looks like the inverse of what he saw when he went into the wormhole, almost. His world turned upside down.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for everyone and their dogs having panic attacks (ok no dogs, but there are a lot of panic attacks here).
> 
> Anyways, I think this is going to come to a close soon. I think Wanda is going to have more of a recovery than a redemption, but I think that fits with what I constructed here fine.

Wanda stumbles into an alley close by Stark Industries, shaking badly as she tries to shake the heavy feeling of fear and guilt from her body. Images of aliens, blood, and bodies keep flashing through her mind over and over again no matter how much she tries to shake them. She slumps against a wall and shakes her head, trying to get the image of death from her mind and honestly she doesn’t even know _who’s_ deaths she’s seeing anymore. New York, Sokovia, the string of bodies she’s left in her wake- she doesn’t know, can’t differentiate. Her breath comes in raggedy, fast, like she’s wounded or something but she knows she has no injuries. That only serves to confuse her more, which is perhaps why she doesn’t notice the soft thud beside her until Peter’s hand is on her shoulder.

She reaches out with her power fast, drawing her strange red energy around herself and thrusting it out until she recognizes Peter’s face and drops him abruptly. He lands neatly on the ground but he looks shaken, surprised. She tries to apologize but her words come out garbled and strange- a weird mix of English and Sokovian. “Hey, whoa, just breathe,” Peter says softly, walking over to her with no fear and she marvels at that. She’s never used her power on anyone and had them not fear her afterwards. “Yeah, like that,” Peter tells her, “you’re doing good.”

She wants to tell Peter she’s not a damn child, she doesn’t need to be spoken to like one, but his hand on her back is comforting. It reminds her of Pietro whenever there were thunderstorms. She used to hate them, they scared her as a child, and he’d always rub her back and tell her it was okay. She lets out a half sob at that, feeling the loss of her brother sharply in that moment even though she doesn’t want to. Pietro is gone, her parents are _gone_ and all she has left is herself. That guilt though, it sticks to her, and she wonders if she’s even got that left anymore. If she truly has lost everything, herself included. “I’m fine,” she manages to tell Peter, accent thicker than usual.

“No you aren’t,” Peter says softly. “Panic attacks suck, but you can learn how to manage them,” he tells her.

“Panic attack?” she murmurs, unfamiliar with the phrase.

“Yeah. Sometimes people get them when they go through some stuff. I started getting then after my uncle Ben died,” Peter tells her. “I thought I was dying the first time it happened.”

*

Charles wakes them all up in the middle of a night with a mental shout and Bucky flies out of his bed, extending a knife he doesn’t even remember grabbing. He frowns and sticks it back in its holster before going to the living room where Charles is yelling out loud now. “We need to get back to New York _now_ ,” he tells them, stuffing these ugly blue sweaters into his bag. “That telepath is more powerful than I am and that is _not_ an easy task, I can reach every mind in this country and have them all freeze if I wanted to and it wouldn’t even cause mental exertion. If she’s more powerful than that we have bigger problems than we thought,” he explains. Phil looks a lot less sleepy after that and Bucky feels numb.

“Oh no, none of that,” Charles says and the feeling fades. Bucky frowns and guilt flashes across Charles’ features for a moment. “I’m sorry but we have no time for your panic attack, you can do that later right now we need to find Tony and Steve because they’re both in some kind of mental distress that forced me out of _both_ of their minds and Tony’s is basically shrieking for help.” He grabs his bag and all but runs from the room.

Phil sighs, “I was enjoying having a full night’s sleep for once,” he mumbles. Bucky gives him a dirty look for that because his sleep patterns so aren’t the problem here.

*

Tony stands in his lab, unsure when he got there but he’s got a bunch of plans in front of him for… something, he isn’t sure. There are several designs on the pages across his desk, all of them in their infancy and he’s unsure if any of them would actually do anything to protect the world or himself. His heart is still racing, his vision is still a little blurry, and his brain is moving so fast he’s having trouble keeping up with it. He keeps seeing Bucky over and over again, hearing his words. _Why would you do this to us_? He doesn’t even know _what_ he did but he knows he needs to stop it somehow. Whatever it is he does, whatever problem he causes he needs to know how to fix it.

The problem is that he has no idea _what_ he did, how they all ended up on an alien planet, how the hell to prevent that. The possibilities are endless but finite and he doesn’t even know where to begin on figuring this out.

He’s looking over some plans for an AI, something he and Bruce came up with years ago not that it had been possible then or even now, when the door to the lab opens. He looks up and drops his plans when he sees Bucky standing there, eyes wide. For a moment he forgets his dream, whatever that was, and all but runs over to him, throwing his arms around his waist. Normally he isn’t that… forthcoming. Bucky needs space, time to decide on things and Tony always makes room for it but after watching him die…

“Whoa, hey,” Bucky says, wrapping his arms around Tony immediately. “Oh, wow, what’s wrong?” he asks, likely responding to the shaking Tony’s body has given in to. So far he’s managed to hold back but shit, he can’t keep it together anymore and- he recognizes the familiar tightness in breath, the chest pain, the inability to focus. Panic attack. He tries to extract himself from Bucky- some logical part of his mind reminds him that Bucky isn’t exactly in a good mental state to deal with his bullshit too- but Bucky pulls him back. “Tony, you need to breathe ok? You’ll be okay, I’ve got you. And I used to be an assassin so like… that’s probably a good amount of protection,” he says.

Tony lets out a small, almost hysterical laugh at that. God, he loves Bucky. This isn’t the first time this has happened though so he does what he always does when this happens. He tries to breathe, to force himself to relax and pull back from the panic. Its not an easy task and he sort of sounds like he’s wearing a sleep apnea mask or like he’s breathing through a tiny tube or something but he does manage to calm the shaking a little. “What the hell happened?” Bucky asks softly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”

He laughs again, a little less hysterical this time. “I get panic attacks a lot, actually. Started happening after New York. Thought I was dying the first time it happened.” Bucky makes a small noise of surprise and it occurs to him that in Bucky’s time Doms didn’t much show vulnerability let alone openly admit to it.

“Panic attacks suck,” Bucky murmurs and Tony supposes he’d have experience even if he’s never seen it. Tony figures Bucky probably does what he does when he’s having a panic attack- hide somewhere until he’s okay again. They remain silent for a long few moments while Tony manages to mostly get his breathing under control even if he feels light headed and his heart is still racing. One thing at a time. “Come on,” Bucky murmurs eventually, “lets go lay down.”

Tony goes, not having enough energy to protest and also not really wanting to even if he did.

*

In Bucky’s time Doms didn’t do vulnerability let alone throw themselves at him with it. Its not really something he would have said he’d find attractive if he’d been asked yesterday but today he has new opinions. Or maybe that’s because of the weird rush, he has no clue but he has to talk to someone about it and he can’t talk to Steve because he hates Tony and he’s not talking to Tony about himself.

“Hey,” he says to Natasha when she appears in the kitchen, “can I talk to you?” he asks.

Natasha gives him an annoyed look as she reaches for the coffee he already made for Tony earlier. “No,” she says, pulling the pot from the warmer and walking away.

Bucky jumps out of his chair, “wait! Come back, I need friends,” he says bluntly. It occurs to him that life in this admittedly very cool penthouse isn’t everything he wants. He has to get out more, explore some. Or continue exploring, he’s got a list.

Natasha glares at him, “go talk to Steve,” she mumbles, drinking coffee straight from the pot. Bucky wrinkles his nose at her.

“No, its about Tony and I don’t want a ‘he sucks find someone new’ lecture. Its not like I’ve got anyone else unless you have suggestions,” he says.

“Talk to him,” Natasha says, gesturing to the person who just walked in but when Bucky turns he finds Charles there.

“Never mind, I’ll bottle my emotions until I explode,” he mumbles.

Charles sighs, “what is it you wanted to talk about?” he asks a little wearily, eyeing Bucky suspiciously and frankly Bucky is the one who should be suspicious, thanks. “Tony,” he says and Bucky glares. “Don’t you give me that look, I heard you talk about it with Natasha! Honestly I don’t have the energy to read your mind every five minutes, Bucky. Its not like I’ll learn anything interesting.”

He thinks of that weird sex dream he had about Falseworth back in World War Two and decides Charles is probably wrong about that assessment. But he really does need someone to talk to and if Charles is it… well. “Have you ever like… taken care of a Dom? Not sexually or whatever, but in an emotional way.”

A few emotions flicker over Charles’ features, settling on hurt for a moment, before he nods. “I’m assuming you were the one who soothed Tony’s panic attack yesterday, then,” he says. Bucky frowns and Charles sighs, “certain emotional events are louder than others and trauma is always the loudest. Especially in strong minds like Tony’s. His pain damn near drowned everyone else around here out.”

Everyone else around here, for Charles, was at least the entire city. For the first time since meeting him he feels bad for Charles. Obviously his abilities come with empath perks though he’s sure Charles wouldn’t call them that, especially if he has to live out the emotions of someone else’s panic attacks. He sighs, “yeah, that was me. But like... it was weird, well not weird, well kind of weird. Mostly because in my time Doms just didn’t do that, they mostly pretended not to have emotions until they lost it generally in the form of domestic violence. But I haven’t… its not like HYDRA let me have emotions let alone trusted me with theirs. It’s… kind of a trip, you know, knowing you have that kind of power over someone. Not that I’d ever misuse it. Intentionally,” he adds because he has, technically, already misused Tony’s trust. But that’s not something he ever wants to do again if he can help it. And he can.

Charles nods, a weary smile coming across his face. “I know what you mean. There have been advancements, sure, but plenty of Doms are still emotionally constipated. It is a little bit of a rush, isn’t it? You’re always expected to hand your whole self over and sometimes it feels like you’re not getting much back. When they’re vulnerable and they let you see it it’s a bit like you’re getting away with something,” Charles says, laughing a little and Bucky grins.

“Yes, that exactly! I’m half waiting for him to take it back,” he says.

Charles outright laughs at that. “Could you imagine? ‘No, you didn’t see that panic attack at all stop remembering it’,” he says in a bad imitation of Tony that cracks Bucky up considering Charles hadn’t been able to lose the accent.

“Okay but Steve would one hundred percent try that. He’s not good at asking for help.” Its probably one of his worst traits, a little exaggerated now and Bucky suspects that’s because Steve needs help. Its obvious he’s not happy and its more obvious that he’s never going to admit that out loud.

“Oh _trust_ me I have experience with the type,” Charles says. “Of course he had to go and be the love of my life and then leave me but you know. Its too early to get into all that- Erik is probably the most emotionally constipated person on the planet and this is coming from someone with empathic abilities that can literally feel what he’s feeling and I _still_ had no idea what was happening.” He shakes his head and Bucky does too. Doms, he swears. They expect you to trust them completely but they don’t seem fond of handing that trust back to their subs. Except Tony, apparently, and Bucky likes that feeling. He’s not certain he’s ever felt it before and he doesn’t want it to go away.

*

Tony drags his ass out of bed feeling like shit, which isn’t unusual after a panic attack. He’ll feel overly anxious and emotionally touchy for the next week or so because a single incident can throw him like that. After New York he was on the edge of panic basically all of the time and it drove him nuts probably literally. But then he hadn’t had Bucky to there to hold him and tell him he was okay. Unlike when Pepper did it he believes it and he doesn’t get that. Its not like he doesn’t trust Pepper but- right, she hadn’t really believed her words then and why would she? It’s not like either of them had extensive experience with panic attacks then and Bucky probably has a whole lot of experience with worse that Tony doesn’t even want to consider. Point is Tony actually bought into Bucky’s comfort and it at least leaves him feeling marginally less shitty at least about himself.

Bucky though… Tony hopes he didn’t over step his bounds there because he has s shit ton of issues without adding Tony’s to his pile. He’d needed the comfort sure, but not if it was going to be a strain on Bucky. He’s been fine on his own for this long and he will do just fine on his own again.

When he leaves his room though he hears the unmistakable sound of Bucky and Charles laughing and he frowns. Last he left Bucky he hadn’t been fond of Charles and wait, where did that come from? His brain kind of hurts when he tries to focus on it so he decides to drop it for now. He trudges his way into the living room and tilts his head to the side when he finds Bucky and Charles sitting on the couch grinning at each other. “Um. Good morning?” he asks, unsure what the hell this is.

Bucky smiles wider, “morning,” he says enthusiastically.

“Is there coffee?” he asks and Bucky’s smile dims.

“Well there _was_ but Natasha made off with the pot,” he says apologetically.

Tony makes an irritated noise and for a moment Bucky winces. Charles shoots him a dirty look and since when the hell are he and Bucky friends even? “She probably won’t even bring back the damn pot, she pretty much never does.” Where the hell is she storing these damn things? Bucky drops the tenseness in his muscles though, gathering that Tony’s annoyance is directed at Natasha, not him. “So since when are you friends?” he asks, “not that that’s a bad thing,” he adds, not wanting to discourage Bucky from branching out. That’s probably for the best, really.

“We were talking about emotionally constipated Doms,” Charles says and Tony snorts.

“Shit, you probably have three thousand stories about Erik alone,” he says, shaking his head at the memories. They’d been good together for the hot second that Erik allowed it. Then he got frightened off, scared of being close to anyone ever again after the last time he allowed himself to care about someone. Never mind that his mom was a situation that couldn’t have been helped and Charles is not exactly lacking in an ability to defend himself.

“That’s putting it mildly,” Charles says, slight smile to his features. “Um. I’ve got news of that telepath so I’ll go find Steve and Natasha, might as well tell you all together,” he says, standing up and scurrying off in a totally unsubtle way.

Tony shakes his head a little and turns to Bucky, “anything to tell me?” he asks, keeping his tone purposefully lighthearted so he doesn’t frighten Bucky off. Thankfully Bucky is feeling less anxious than usual today or something because he doesn’t shrink back into himself.

“Mostly no- Charles left out the part where I… I don’t know how to explain it. Last night… sucked for you mostly but for me-“ he stops for a moment, considers and Tony lets him because he’s talking honestly and that was the problem they had before wasn’t it? He frowns, unsure about that too and he thinks he needs to talk to Charles because he’s got some missing memories and obviously Charles is the one who took them. He knows that he’d have a reason though so he decides to sit on that while Bucky continues. “I don’t get to be the one in control. Ever. Never have- even with Steve being sick all the time he was the one calling the shots really. Being a sub and in the army is self explanatory, then HYDRA. There’s never been a moment in my life where someone has just… trusted me or gave me a little control. Obviously that’s not an _ideal_ situation but it was nice, being in some kind of control for once. Being able to help someone out, being _trusted_ to do that.”

That… isn’t what Tony had expected, especially not when it feels almost… therapeutic to Bucky to have let him help Tony through a panic attack. But the way Bucky put it makes sense, sort of. “I was kind of worried I overstepped my bounds,” he says honestly and Bucky shakes his head immediately.

“No, you didn’t. I liked that, I want more of it- sans the panic attacks obviously. More trust, less panic attacks,” he says, wincing a little as it comes out a bit rough.

Tony smiles, “I know what you meant. You had an interest in that anyways, playing Dom- guess that served as kind of a taste. Pepper was always pretty awful with it.” She tried, but during that time she also had her own issues post Mandarin and Tony suspects that influenced her bad attempts at comfort. That and the totally out of character behavior from him probably freaked her out and for good reason. He supposes his worry about overloading Bucky comes from accidentally overloading Pepper with a bunch of shit she didn’t know how to handle. Ultimately its what ended their relationship so he’s surprised it seems to have strengthened this one.

Bucky raises an eyebrow, “seriously?”

Tony nods. “She didn’t know what she was doing and she had her own worries. Obviously your comfort came from a place of experience and I could feel that, which kind of sucks for you but uh- I appreciate it, by the way. Its… difficult for me to do that, open up.” It probably helped that he saw Bucky die hours before and blame him for his death, he thinks. All the right things at all the right times.

“Good I uh- I really like that trust, even if I kind of didn’t earn it,” he says and Tony remembers something about an argument in the kitchen and frowns.

“Yeah, do you know why my memories of the last week are Swiss cheese?” he asks and Bucky laughs.

“That is something Charles can explain when he gets back and also it was your idea, I totally disapproved,” he says, sticking his hands in the air and Tony laughs. Way to jump accountability there but he’s sure whatever bad idea this was _was_ his.

Charles steps out from around the corner with Natasha and Steve and Tony steals the pot of coffee out of Natasha’s hand immediately. She doesn’t threaten to murder him immediately so he guesses she’s drank enough to be coherent. “You are an absolute _pain_ in my ass,” Charles tells him. “You couldn’t leave the memories alone for ten damn seconds and you just about ruined our whole plan when you decided to prove Steve wrong with video evidence and I had to erase your damn mind again to keep you from outing yourself to your telepath foe and I think you failed. Hence being shown your worst fears- which is what you both saw, by the way. And she booted me out of your heads to do it,” he adds.

Steve turns to Tony, who’s face has gone paler than he thinks its ever gone before because if this person is more powerful than Charles how the _fuck_ are they going to stop her?

“I take it that’s a bad thing,” Steve mumbles. Yeah, no shit.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this might be the second last chapter.
> 
> Also I tried to spend time trying to figure out if this was even readable but then I got annoyed with life and decided its fucking three in the morning I want to die I'll just post and go the fuck to sleep.
> 
> Also warnings for mentions of torture, child abuse- the stuff that comes with Tony's past basically. And Wanda's mental manipulations.

Peter introduces Wanda to his aunt, who seems to take to her well, but leaves them to Peter’s room. Its strange to see that kind of trust- in Sokovia parent’s had this _thing_ with girls and boys being in the same room together alone but May doesn’t seem to hold the same sentiment. Peter brings her tea, which she takes gratefully, before he sits in his desk chair and regards her for a long moment. “Are you… you have a house, right?” he asks awkwardly, obviously unsure of how to go about asking something like that.

If she weren’t so shaken from Stark’s mind she would have laughed at something like that. “Yeah, I have a house,” she says. An apartment, actually, but she’s sure Peter doesn’t care about the semantics.

He frowns a little, “are you sure? Because you spend a lot of time in coffee shops and its okay if- well okay its not _really_ okay but like its not bad, if you have nowhere to go. Would kind of suck considering everything else though,” he says softly. ‘Everything else’ being her home country being decimated.

She sighs, “I’ve got an apartment, Peter. Its sparse and not very homey, but its there.”

“Okay,” he murmurs. “You can stay here though, if you want. I think you should, just to recover a little.”

Normally she’d disagree and just leave but this apartment is warm, and touches of Peter lie all about the room. There’s posters, a Lego Star Wars death star, some clothes piled onto the back of Peter’s desk chair that he’s avoiding sitting on. Its been a long time since she’s been in a space like this and for now she decides to rest. She can continue with her plans later but for now she smiles, deciding to tease Peter a little. “So,” she says, “what’s with your ugly blue and red pajamas?”

Peter turns bright red and leaps out of his chair; nearly tipping it over before he reaches around to ensure it doesn’t hit the ground. “Okay you can’t tell Aunt May, she’ll kill me,” he says quickly.

*

They all sit around for awhile in silence before Tony sighs, deciding to speak. “Why our worst fears? And why Steve and I specifically?” he asks eventually. Charles, he’s hoping, will have some kind of insight to his questions.

Charles at least perks up a little, “oh, well her target is you specifically I gathered that much. She rather hates you. Steve was just too close, I think. Otherwise I suspect Natasha would have been targeted too and she wasn’t,” Charles says.

No one looks relieved by this and Tony is almost surprised to find Steve in the camp of ‘not relieved’ too. Its not like they’re well known for being cuddly with each other so he’s surprised to find that, on some level, Steve must care about him. Or maybe it’s just that he cares about Bucky and Tony being killed off by a ridiculously overpowered telepath would screw things up for him, obviously.

“So,” Steve says after another moment, “how do we protect Tony?” Tony frowns, surprised by this but at least grateful, if suspicious, of the help.

“I’m not sure,” Charles says. “I’ve never met another telepath more powerful than me. I’ve only ever met one that could keep me out of her head and that was only- well, she had her tricks. None that would be useful to any of you,” he adds when Steve looks hopeful.

“I guess I’ll die,” he says, shrugging like that one meme Harley sent him once and everyone looks horrified. “What? It was a joke,” he says but only Natasha seems to catch on to the meme reference before smiling just a little.

Bucky looks a little pissed off, “well it wasn’t a funny one,” he mumbles.

*

Wanda allows herself a day before she decides she’s done playing with her food. This has gone wrong in every possible way- Murphy’s Law catching up with her finally- and she’s sick of that. The telepath poses a problem to her- he doesn’t feel as powerful as her but she doubts he’d be easy to deal with, but he ends up leaving with Rogers anyways. Something about chasing down some lead on who she is and that’s fine. She should be gone by the time they find out who she is anyways. Natasha, pesky as ever, stays behind and so does Bucky but neither of them are really a threat to her.

Natasha she catches outside the penthouse and she does what she did with Steve and Tony before. Her fears are much softer than Stark’s, thankfully, and she leaves her there to live it out. It should occupy her for some time. She’ll do the same to Barnes when she gets to him. Stark isn’t entirely difficult to track down, he’s in the kitchen with Bucky, but he’s between her and Barnes. Damn. Not that she needs to be close, but that does help…

Bucky notices her first, standing fast while Tony whirls around, perceiving Bucky’s noting a threat. When he spots her he frowns, “you’re younger than I thought you would be,” he says, tone weary. Unlike everyone else she’s managed to track down and kill he doesn’t laugh at her or underestimate her on the spot. Instead he considers her, carefully judging her movements and shifting his position a little to further put himself between her and Bucky. Like that would help. Bucky shifts closer to Tony uselessly. They won’t be able to help each other now.

“What did you expect, then?” she asks, irritated with his assumption.

He frowns a little, “not a teenager,” he decides eventually. His mind is racing through the possibilities but her accent already led him to the most likely cause for her presence. An image of a bald man looming over her- no, Stark- flickers through his mind fast but it leaves almost as fast as it appears. She has no idea who the man is, but she knows Tony has a burning hatred towards him. Its rare she gets that much from a flash so she chases it deeper. Barnes must recognize something in her gaze but she flings her power in his direction too, ignoring the small squeak he lets out when his fears chase him down a rabbit hole.

Stark’s mind is clear, but messy. Its hard to describe but his mindscape is barren except for a few fallen sky scrappers and all the dust. Its strange to find herself here, not somewhere else in his thoughts, but when she enters one of the buildings she finds her way into the place she wants to be in anyways. A mind palace, then- she’s heard of these but never been in one. Had no idea Stark had one from his surface thoughts. She finds a picture of a man that resembles Tony and tilts her head to the side when she examines it, determining it to be Stark’s father.

She yelps as she feels a sharp crack against her face but someone violently grabs her arms, pulling her straight again, “Stark men are made of iron,” she man- Howard her mind tells her or maybe its Stark’s- growls at her. She manages to pull herself out of that, shaken, and scurries away from the picture towards something new. It’s the man she saw in Tony’s mind, the bald man, and she concentrates on it for a moment.

“ _Is this all you’re going to give me? Expensive flops?_ ” a voice, Obadiah’s voice Tony’s mind tells her, says. His tone is harsh and she feels a wall of shame open up under her so strong she nearly falls over at the force of it.

“ _When I ordered the hit on you I thought I was killing the golden goose. You really think just because you have an idea that it belongs to you? Your father, he helped give us the Atomic Bomb. Now what kind of world would it be today if he was as selfish as you?_ ” Obadiah continues but there’s something else there too. It takes a moment to pick out Tony’s thoughts in the memory from the gut wrenching fear of Obadiah but behind that fear is a sharp, _pure_ disagreement of his philosophies.

 _It would be a better world_ Tony’s thoughts tell her and images of fire and explosions briefly fill her mind, followed by a harsh disgust and hatred for herself. No- the thoughts are Tony’s and the feelings are his opinions of himself. She tries to pull herself from it but he feels too strongly for her to escape it.

“ _For thirty five years I’ve been holding you up! I built this company up from nothing! Nothing’s gunna stand in my way, least of all_ you!” Obadiah tells her, no, Tony. His reaction is strong and instant. _Take it, then_ he thinks because he doesn’t want anything to do with it, horrified by his legacy. Ashamed of it.

Wanda finally manages to pull herself from that, stumbling back into Stark’s mind palace. She can feel herself shaking but she ignores it, pressing on for something else to exploit. She’s tired of a hall of bad memories. As she thinks that the images around her change and, on a whim, she chooses the one of Pepper Potts. They dated for awhile, she’s sure he has no bad memories of her so when she falls into a memory of Pepper Potts falling to her death she’s shocked, but not enough to pull herself from the memory. She watches her slip away, just out of her grasp and she’s _trying_ hard to catch her but ultimately she fails at it.

She pulls herself from that, shaking her head and turning around. She nearly falls over when the landscape around her changes too and her eyebrows draw together at all the sand. That’s when she hears the gunshots and its instinct to duck and try and find cover. Only she’s not her she’s Tony and when she ducks behind the rock she feels relief until she- _Tony_ \- looks in front of himself only to find he’s ducked away from the guns and into a bomb. ‘Stark’ reads clearly on the side of it, reminding her of all that time she spent looking at a similar bomb in her home but Tony gets the chance to outrun it.

He’s not successful and when he’s blown backwards Wanda feels a level of pain she’s never experienced before and it doesn’t go away when she wakes up. She has no idea where she is, but her chest feels like its being torn apart from the outside in and she prays to a god she doesn’t even believe in for death. When she wakes up again she’s not so lucky and a man tells her that his name is Ho Yinsen.

The memory spins again and she frowns, wondering where her control went over the situation. Yinsen is on the floor now, breathing labored and she knows he’s going to die. “Don’t… don’t waste your life,” he tells her but the looming feeling in the back of her head is that she already has. She has no way to make up for what she’s done, never even could if she tried and she _will_ try, but she knows it will be a fruitless effort. No one can make up for what she’s done, its simply not possible.

She finally manages to pulls herself free from that and finds herself back in Stark’s kitchen, head swimming as lingering images swirl around in her head.

 _He never told me he loved me. He never even said he_ liked _me._

_Big man, in a suit of armor. Take that off and what are you?_

_Textbook narcissist._

_You don’t deserve her._

_I’m not that kind of doctor._

The different voices crowd her mind and she shakes her head but it doesn’t seem to free her from the harsh voices going off in her head. Stark leans against the counter, hand over his chest and she _swears_ she feels that pain too but he did it to himself. It was poetic justice, that bomb. He _earned_ that and then some and he got to live about it! Her family didn’t get that honor and they deserved it more than Stark ever would. She can feel his agreement, faintly, and that just pisses her off more but his damn memories keep crowding her head and Howard is yelling and Maria is trying to pull him back and the fear of failure is starting to make her head feel like its going to explode and the guilt feels like liquid in her throat and…

She lifts her hand finally and throws it to the side and finally, blessedly, Stark’s thoughts go silent as he flies into the wall.

*

Tony’s head hurts like hell when he finally wakes up and the arguing happening all around him doesn’t help any. “Would you all shut the fuck up?” he snaps at them, pulling himself into a sitting position. Everyone in the room, thankfully, listens to his request as the turn to stare at him.

“I _told_ you all he was fine but no, no one listens to the telepath!” Charles says, irritated.

“We’re so not arguing right now,” Tony cuts in. “Just tell me what the hell happened after I got tossed into the wall.”

Natasha, he notes, looks pale and shaken but she’s the one who speaks first. “Not sure, I came in to find Bucky trying to crawl his way over to you like that puppy from John Wick.”

He squints, “what the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks though it seems he’s the only one who gets the reference. Probably because only he and Nat like bad action movies due to being the only ones with actual taste. Well, its possible Bucky likes them too but they have no idea at the moment and he probably doesn’t know either.

“What? It reminded me of the puppy,” she says, shrugging. Tony shakes his head and looks over to Steve.

“Care to elaborate?”

Steve’s eyebrows draw together, “I don’t know who John Wick is,” he says.

Tony sighs because Steve is useless. “Charles?” he asks.

“Bucky appeared to have suffered a severe anxiety attack but still managed to drag himself over to you, presumably to see if you were okay,” he says. Wow, that is like the puppy from John Wick. He reaches out to Bucky, who sticks his hand into Tony’s immediately and he laces their fingers together. Steve looks like someone’s stuffed a lemon up his ass but Tony doesn’t care.

“That’s it?” he asks and Natasha shrugs.

“We don’t know what you did to get her to leave,” she tells him.

He looks over to Charles, “you remember that mind palace you had me build?” he asks and Charles winces hard. “Yeah, guess she didn’t like what she found.”

Bucky frowns, “what do you mean?” he asks but Tony doesn’t feel the need to clarify that Charles had him build a place for all his worst memories and that he used it as a convenient way to, for lack of a less eloquent way to put it, torture Wanda until she was too disoriented to do much damage to Bucky or anyone else. But mostly Bucky. He watched Erik do it once and it seemed effective then. The tradeoff, of course, was the telepath’s best kept secret- if they’re touching your mind you’re touching theirs. So he got a good dose of Wanda’s worst memories too and none of them were particularly fun. Most of them involved him directly.

*

Finding Wanda hadn’t been hard mostly because after spending that long in his head she’s likely to go to the place Tony would most likely go when distressed. Thanks to her age, which hadn’t been difficult to look up with the information Tony gathered from her head, he figured out the most likely location she’d be in. Of course by now the bar he used to frequent was closed, probably between owners at the moment, and Wanda is perched at the bar in the exact stool that Tony used to sit in. Slightly out of the way, but still close to the bar tender who kindly overlooked his obviously being underage.

“Killing me here would be a lot easier. And cleaner,” he says, casting a look at the dirty floor. He isn’t sure his death would be cleaner due to the more discreet location or the fact that its so disgusting in here a dead body would probably go unnoticed until the stench brought people in.

Wanda half turns to face him, haunted. “No,” she says softly and he frowns.

“After all that why not? I can’t imagine my worst memories were… well, they aren’t yours,” he says eventually. Wanda looks confused, a likely symptom of not knowing how, exactly, her powers work and what his tradeoff was. Of course she can also pull the answer from his mind, too.

“They don’t usually ask for death,” Wanda murmurs.

He knows that too. “I’m not stupid enough to think I haven’t earned it. The fact that you’re the first to come looking is a surprise.” He’s had this coming for a long time and… and he’d want to kill his parents murderer too.

“You slept with him,” Wanda says, responding to his thoughts.

Tony rolls his eyes, “you damn well know I haven’t and Bucky wasn’t really the one who killed my parents anyways. He was just the weapon HYDRA used. I can’t blame him when he was more of a victim in that scenario than I was.” ‘Course the people who made the call are probably already dead so its not like he gets his revenge. Bucky certainly doesn’t get his thought he doesn’t seem the vengeful type to Tony.

“You genuinely think you deserve to die?” Wanda asks but she already knows the answer to that.

“What I’ve done is something I can’t make up for and what I did after is something Pepper is already doing more work with than I do. The world won’t stop moving because I’m gone.” Hell, if he’d been killed a couple decades ago it might be a better place.

“You’re not like the rest…” Wanda murmurs and he knows its true but he’s still skeptical.

“None of them thought, maybe for a second, that they brought their deaths on themselves? They were basically all HYDRA,” he says. There were a couple other organizations sprinkled in there but its hard to believe a bunch of Nazis might not think ‘hey, maybe I am a piece of shit’ before they died.

Wanda snorts, “that requires a conscience. Which you have too much of- it borders on ego. Not everything is your fault personally,” she says, irritation coloring her tone.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “not something you believed a month ago,” he says. “And you’re right- but the I am responsible for the things I think I am so its not ego, its accountability. Not that I had any until I was thirty five,” he mumbles. Not that most anyone outside of a few fringe groups and Christine Everhart, who really is the one who kicked off this entire thing, called him on it.

“You think highly of women,” Wanda murmurs, responding to this thoughts again and he rolls his eyes.

“That’s seriously your response?” Obviously he thinks highly of women unless they’re idiots but that’s not really a gender thing. And no one can top Justin Hammer for the stupidity card so there’s that to consider.

“Why do you hate him so much?” Wanda asks, responding to his thoughts again.

“He stole my graham crackers at camp once and I really like graham crackers,” he says.

He doesn’t expect Wanda to start laughing, doubling over with it. “Graham crackers? You absolutely loath the man over _graham crackers_?”

He shrugs, “that and he’s a total twit with less engineering ability than a demented cow fetus with six hooves, has the brain of a particularly stupid goat born in Chernobyl, and thinks he’s god’s gift to the world when he’s lucky if he’s important enough to be fly vomit on a pigeon shit. But mostly the crackers.” Wanda continues laughing, doubling over into the dirty bar before her laughter turns to tears and Tony sighs, picking his way closer to her. “Its not pleasant, learning your parents’ murderer might be human after all. That, I know.”

She looks up at him, wiping tears from her eyes and accidentally leaving streaks on her face with dirt. “How could you possibly know that?” she asks and he laughs without much humor.

“Did you forget Bucky did, for better or worse, technically kill my parents? It would be _so_ much easier, cleaner, to just write him off as the murderer and kill him but that would be ignoring the context of his actions. He had no choice. Now I had choice, and I made the wrong one literally every single day for the better part of my life. But I’m not the monster under your bed- I’m a man, even if I’m not a very good one. That’s hard to swallow.” Wanda seems to be having a hard time with it and he doesn’t blame her. Not when so many of the people involved with her family’s deaths really were the worst kinds of people. But he’s different, a more complicated kind of bad person rather than easy to write off as evil and humans don’t like complicated.

“Why did you do it?” she asks and they both know what she means.

“Because I was naïve and stupid. I thought I was protecting people, Americans,” he clarifies because that’s relevant to her, seeing as she isn’t American. “I thought people made the right calls because I never wanted to consider what happens when they don’t. I wanted a neat conscience and a profitable business and in doing so I let myself ignore the realities of what I did to make myself feel better. I was irresponsible at best and a terrorist at worst. I’d lean towards the latter, not that anyone would ever call me that. At least not in America.” He’s sure Wanda has met plenty of people who would agree with his assessment of his actions but they’re on the wrong end of his weapons. Its easy to argue you’re the good guy when you think you’re right, but when you know the other guy is wrong and they’re shooting at you anyways, well. That’s an easy conclusion.

“And you think you’re wrong now,” she says and he lets out a disgusted noise.

“Yeah, because I experienced what I put other people through on a regular basis for myself. I never should have needed to nearly die by my own weapon’s design to know blowing people up is a bad idea.” It should be common fucking sense that war profiteering is a bad plan- its making money off of conflict, inviting more to continue making money. What kind of piece of shit even _does_ that?

“Most people don’t understand until they experience things from other people’s point of view,” Wanda murmurs.

“Then we’ve not exactly done well as a society,” Tony mumbles. Some things are just obvious- like not making money off of blowing people up. Sure some other things are more complicated, but that’s a pretty easy decision for most. And not always in a good way.

Wanda remains silent for a long moment. “You had open heart surgery in a cave with no anesthetic. Even you don’t deserve that,” she murmurs.

“That’s polite of you, but I’m not certain everyone would agree,” he says. If he were inclined to believe in hell he’d think he’d be going there but frankly the concept is ridiculous to him. Maybe its all the little red devils with pitch forks he’s seen his whole life or maybe its just that he can’t buy into religion, who knows.

“I’ve… done awful things too,” Wanda murmurs, dropping her head a little in shame.

Yeah, no real denying that. “Most would argue that was justified all things considered.”

“Why is it you think your crimes are unforgivable but mine aren’t?” she asks, fixing him with a shrewd look.

Tony smiles but it isn’t pleasant. “Your actions came from a place of hurt, mine came from wanting to make a buck. Tell me which one you think is more moral.”

“Neither of them are,” she says eventually. “I… this was… I never should have done this,” she whispers.

“Yeah well, in your defense you chose some really shitty people so its not like the world is missing out,” he points out.

“They had families,” Wanda says. “I’ve hurt them too.”

“If a family member is truly hurt by their Nazi relative being killed they have bigger issues than a dead uncle,” Tony says. “But you should probably refrain from murderous revenge in the future, though, just a pro-tip. You have a lot of power; you can use it for good you know. I happen to have an organization that could use the perspective of someone who isn’t from America,” he says, smiling wearily.

Wanda squints, “you’re not… _serious_ , are you?” she asks and he shrugs.

“Look, you’ve made some bad choices but lets be real here, I know people who’ve made worse. Seriously, you should read Natasha’s record, she did some fucked up shit but she’s trying to do better. So am I. Neither of us are convinced that’s enough, but we both know we have something to offer to the world that can make positive change. So do you. So take a chance to do something with your power that helps people, take a chance on moving on. I know better than most that not moving forward does little to help you in the long run.” God, he’s the fucking poster boy for letting your past become you. Ironic, he thinks, considering his opinion of Steve for doing the same.

Maybe he’s misjudged him a little, even if he still doesn’t understand literally anything about him. Especially that tacky ass suit though Tony has been trying to phase out the nasty looking flag theme for something more tasteful that also looks cool.

“Do you… think the Avengers would even accept that?” Wanda asks and Tony shrugs.

“We’re mostly all a bunch of fuck ups. I mean you already know my history, Bruce experimented on himself and that didn’t go well, Steve is mostly perfect but whatever, Natasha was a tortured spy turned freelance spy and that had some _nasty_ consequences. Clint… mostly just beats up these guys in tracksuits, actually. They say ‘bro’ a lot, its weird. Point is most of us already have questionable pasts be it our own making like Bruce and I or extenuating circumstances like Natasha and Steve. We don’t really have a place to judge. Also you’re fucking terrifying and I really would rather not have to deal with you on the wrong end of our business again,” he admits.

Wanda smiles a little, “I… I don’t know,” she says finally.

He nods, “well, you know where to find me if your change your mind. Please refrain from destroying my cameras next time, they’re not cheap.” He turns to leave but Wanda’s words stop him.

“Did… you plan this?” she asks and he laughs.

“Fuck no, I thought you were going to crush me on sight with your awesome powers. This is not at all where I thought this would go but you know. Less clean up.” And probably less heartbroken Bucky, that’s a definite plus.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so this boi is long as shit. That hadn't been intended, but I did want to end this off well and I think i've done a decent job giving the characters time to tie things up.
> 
> Fun Fact: thanks to the way Wanda was introduced in this universe and her participation in the Avengers Civil War and the Accords are bypassed entirely though Thanos and his ballsack chin still happen.
> 
> Also I hope you have fun with the deleted scenes! The memes one is my fav.

“You did _what_?” Bucky yells. Tony winces, knowing this wasn’t going to go well but feeling the need to explain that Wanda showing up again maybe wouldn’t result in instant death.

“If I let her kill me, technically the problem would be solved,” he points out.

“The problem would be-” Bucky’s voice cuts off and Tony’s pretty sure its because it doesn’t naturally go that high. “That creates a whole new set of issues!”

“Significantly easier to solve issues,” Tony says. Replacing him is easy- Rhodey is an excellent candidate because he already knows how to fly the suits and he’s probably one of the only people who could create whole new improved ones too. So that’s fixed, Pepper runs his company, Tony has his eye on this kid in Chicago- real smart, reverse engineered a few of his more ambitious projects and he’s sure Pepper could offer Riri a position part time until she’s out of school. So that’s solved too. As for the personal mess of his death, well, people will move on. Sure it’ll suck but his death isn’t the end of everyone else, it’ll just cause a little mental distress until things go back to normal.

Steve shakes his head, “how the hell are we supposed to replace you?” he asks.

Tony’s surprised _he’s_ the one objecting but okay. “Rhodey. He can do most of the stuff I can do. I mean I’m smarter, and more innovative, but he’s not much of a step down.” And Rhodey knows plenty about flying and tactics that he doesn’t so in at least two ways he’s a step _up_.

“Does he know how to fix all our gear?” Steve asks and oh right, he forgot that he did that. Steve looks pissed, “can’t you, for five _fucking_ seconds, consider the possibilities before doing something stupid?” he snaps.

Tony squints at him, “you jump out of planes with no parachutes all the time,” he points out. “Like you should judge.”

Steve opens his mouth presumably to whine and cry about being basically indestructible but Bucky cuts him off. “You went and became a military experiment so you could join the damn war, lets not act like you’re a master of good decision making,” Bucky snaps. Tony pretends to cough to cover his laugh at that but it doesn’t fool Bucky, who goes back to glaring at him. “Don’t you laugh, you almost got yourself _murdered_ for funsies and then you went and _recruited your would be murderer_? Please explain to me how the _hell_ it is a good idea to recruit someone who made us all live our worst fears,” Bucky snaps.

Tony opens his mouth to respond but closes it because nothing he’s going to say will make Bucky feel better, not really. Instead he looks over to, of all people, Steve. “A little help here?” he asks. He can see Steve’s confusion but he’s the only other person in the room who knows Bucky well in any kind of capacity. Natasha and Charles don’t know him at all and neither seem intent on saying anything anyways.

“Her ability to manipulate minds _would_ be useful,” Steve concedes finally and honestly that is the shittiest defense he’s ever heard even if he can see that Steve sees the merits in his decision. Since when does Steve see the merits in anything he does?

“Her ability to manipulate minds made us all live our worst fears,” Bucky points out, “is no one seriously concerned about that?”

“Her goal was to kill me and she needed to distract you guys to do it. I mean its not exactly a _good_ motivation, but its something. Besides, that on our side is a good thing. It at least ensures that she can screw over anyone we deal with pretty much no effort. That’d solve a lot of property damage problems,” he points out.

“Recruiting her would also mean we know her location and exactly what her power level is at all times,” Steve says, nodding. “Strategically it’s a better choice to recruit someone who outclasses you than fight them.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Tony says, happy to have some actual support here even if its from the last person he would have expected.

Bucky glares at Steve, “if you don’t shut up I’m going to fucking kill you,” he says in a dark tone that has Tony raising his eyebrows.

“He’s… he’s serious about that,” Charles chimes in, apparently feeling the need to give them a forewarning of Bucky’s wretched mood.

*

Charles manages to track Bucky down easily, following the dark, sticky cloud of anger and hurt to find him on the large deck Tony built himself over the city. Charles has to marvel at his ability to choose impressive locations- his views are always stunning. But that isn’t really the concern here so he makes his way to Bucky, who gives him a surely look as he approaches. “Do _you_ have any insight into why-“ his voice cuts out, presumably unexpectedly and Charles sighs.

“Tony… has his issues,” he says slowly. “But even if he didn’t he’s also pragmatic. Wanda disrupted everyone’s lives around here because she wanted _him_ dead. The easiest solution to make her no longer your problem was to offer himself up to her.” He can feel the decision in Tony’s mind, the knowledge that his presence forced everyone to live out the worst things their minds could think up and the solution was right there. It had been an easy call for him to risk himself to ensure that Bucky in particular didn’t need to suffer like that again. Of course then Bucky would have to suffer _Tony’s_ loss but Tony underestimates how much he means to other people.

Bucky shakes his head, “that’s a stupid solution,” he murmurs. Mostly, Charles thinks, because Bucky’s worst fear was losing Tony and Steve before being captured by HYDRA. A total loss of everything all over again.

“You should tell him what she made you see. You might be surprised by his worst fears too,” Charles tells him. Tony saw almost the same thing Bucky did except HYDRA was swapped out for aliens and the rest of the Avengers were dead too. Plus there was the added guilt of somehow managing to not do enough. Charles thinks that stems from being the only one who seems to be worried about future alien attacks and therefore the only one thinking to prepare for them, but he’s not entirely sure.

Bucky sighs. “Does he always do this?” he asks.

Depends, so that’s what Charles tells him. “Steve told him once that he wasn’t the type to lay down on the wire if that’s what was needed and Tony told him he’d rather just cut the wire. Its not a wrong assessment on how both of them operate- but Steve was wrong about Tony being willing to sacrifice himself if needed. To him it doesn’t matter if that wire is the only thing standing between him and death, he’ll cut it if he thinks that’s going to save lives.”

“So what, then Wanda goes on to be someone else’s problem?” he asks, rolling his eyes. His anger comes from a place of deep hurt and more than that fear, but he hides it well. He’ll fit in here well, Charles thinks.

“Wanda has shown next to no interest in tormenting anyone who hasn’t had anything to do with her parents’ deaths- Tony suspects that she only got as involved with the Avengers as she did was due to the way the group is viewed in her home country. Taking that into account, that she only seems to go after people that have personally victimized her and potentially her country, he gave her a low risk assessment.” His life for Wanda to basically disappear into obscurity isn’t a bad play, not the way Tony thought it out. Charles doesn’t necessarily agree with Tony’s assessment- Wanda is vengeful and if someone irritates her enough to cause a retaliation that could mean big problems, but he understands how Tony drew his conclusions.

“That’s a dangerous conclusion,” Bucky murmurs, images of his own fears flashing through his mind at a rapid speed.

Charles sighs, “he’s not entirely wrong- don’t look at me like that- I’ve been in Wanda’s mind. She has a harsh tunnel vision on her goal of avenging her parents’ deaths above all else; she genuinely has no real interests outside of that. If she achieves that goal theoretically she’d stop tormenting people with her powers. Where Tony is wrong, I think, is that he has no real idea how vengeful she is. He can’t possibly know, he’s not a mind reader the way I am, but Wanda will always have a reason to be pissed off and she will always find a way to go to extremes if someone doesn’t step in and show her a better way to handle things. I know people like her- they always have a noble goal and a horrific way to achieve it.” But what makes her truly dangerous is that she’s sympathetic. Charles understand how and why she got to where she is in a way he’ll never understand with a Nazi or AIM, or other terror organizations with horrific roots.

But Wanda was a victim of American imperialism, she lost her parents, her brother, her home country fell under other people’s terror plots. It’s an awful story that makes her extremism seem far more viable and digestible to people than ‘I hate America’ or ‘I think white people are inherently superior’. Her motivations are real, tangible, and that can cause a lot of problems. Charles would know, he’s been chasing down Erik, who also has a horrible history and a charming personality, for years. Granted he’s done a descent job managing to keep Erik from doing anything drastic but Charles sees a lot of him in Wanda and god knows what would happen if they ever found each other. Mass destruction, probably. She’s more powerful than Charles and she’s angry, she has a right to be, but if Erik pointed that anger in the wrong direction, well. There’s little anyone could do to stop that.

Ultimately it’s why he thinks Tony was right to try and recruit her. She’s young and bright- if Tony managed to get through to her, and it would have to be him thanks to his role in her parents’ deaths, she has the potential to turn things around. Erik told him he was painfully optimistic once, Tony has told him the same thing, but he likes to think people are better than what they think themselves to be and he doesn’t think Wanda is an exception. The bonus is that she already has a working model of what forgiveness looks like with Tony’s forgiveness for Bucky even if he really hadn’t been responsible for Tony’s parents’ deaths the same way Tony has a responsibility with Wanda’s.

“You don’t sound like you think Tony was wrong though,” Bucky says, drawing Charles back into the conversation.

“Because he isn’t. She is the way she is because she’s trying to process her trauma in the wrong way. If he shows her a better way maybe she won’t go further down the path she’s on. And with her power its better to be with her than against her in a strictly practical sense.” Steve, unsurprisingly, had picked that up right away and Charles could hear that Natasha has too even if she hadn’t been comfortable with the idea. She’s had her mind meddled with too much to be all that comfortable with a telepath. He can feel that she’s not fond of him either, but holds a level of trust in Tony that extends to him not that Tony senses that. Charles is personally fond of Natasha’s bravery in setting aside her own discomfort and pain to try and do what’s best. That is never an easy thing to do.

“And if you’re wrong?” Bucky asks, skepticism written heavily across his thoughts.

Charles sighs, “well, we managed to deal with literal gods and aliens. I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” he says even if he’s pretty certain they wouldn’t.

*

Peter finds her in Starbucks, which surprises her because its nowhere near where either of them frequent- she chose the location purposefully for that reason. But he finds her anyways, settling into the seat across from her. He doesn’t say anything, he just sits there and Wanda allows it for a few long moments before she speaks. “I met the man that killed me parents,” she says softly.

Peter jerks back, an image of his now deceased uncle flashing through his mind. “I’m so sorry,” he says, unsure what he’s apologizing for and, for a moment, wondering how that came to be the typical response to these kinds of events. Wanda isn’t sure given that Sokovia dealt with death basically the same way. She thinks its partially because death makes people so uncomfortable.

“He wasn’t what I expected,” she says and Peter frowns. “I thought… I made an image in my head of what he’d be like and he wasn’t any of that.” She hadn’t anticipated the amount of pain he felt in life even before Afghanistan, never would have guessed he’d been abused as a child. From the bits she saw of Obadiah it seems that continued into adulthood too. It made her wonder where his choice in what he did began and where his abuse stopped. She ultimately decided it didn’t matter, Tony’s choices were still horrific, but it does give a different flavor to the path he took.

“When my uncle died I thought of finding the man who did it and killing him,” Peter admits softly, shame exuding from his tone and especially his mind. Wanda nearly chokes on it with how much he’s feeling.

She hadn’t known that though, and she knows Peter obviously didn’t go through with it. “Why didn’t you?” she asks, wondering why he made the choice she didn’t.

Peter sits back in his seat, sadness for his uncle permeating the air around him. “Because… well you know that I have powers and stuff. I chose not to use them before uncle Ben died, didn’t think it would make much of a difference you know? I mean there’s the Avengers and stuff, they do things so I don’t have to. But I didn’t use my powers and because I decided not to do that I watched my uncle die.” The actual image of the man falling to the ground flits through his mind and Wanda winces, having an unfortunate amount of knowledge of what watching something like that is like.

“That’s not your fault,” she tells Peter. “That guy made the choice to shoot your uncle, you had nothing to do with that. Neither did he, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“The guy was freaked out, running from the cops. Uncle Ben tried to talk him down and- it would have taken me like five seconds to get the gun and stick him to the wall for the cops to find but I didn’t do that. I could have deescalated the situation and I chose not to and not my uncle is dead. That’s _my_ fault for not doing what I could. So I didn’t chase that guy down because it was me who watched it all happen and didn’t do my part to stop it. If I have these powers I have a responsibility to try and help people with them. Like how smart people invent things to make society better and stuff. What if the guy who invented plumbing was like ‘no its cool that Europe throws shit in the streets’, we’d all have the plague still.”

Wanda doesn’t mean to laugh but the image is kind of funny. Thankfully Peter takes it well and starts laughing too for a few moments until they both settle back into their sadness. “I met Tony Stark too,” she says and Peter perks right up at that.

“Oh my god, is he as cool in real life as he is on TV? Did you get his autograph?” he asks, all but vibrating with excitement Wanda can’t bring herself to feel. He obviously doesn’t make the connection to her meeting her parents’ murderer either and she supposes she understands why. Tony Stark and the Avengers mean something totally different here than they do most anywhere else except maybe Canada thanks to proximity. Even Western Europe isn’t overly fond but in America they’re treated the same way the American public treats their military. Like gods, incapable of doing anything wrong.

 _I happen to have an organization that could use the perspective of someone who isn’t American_.

Tony’s words come back to her and it occurs to her that he knows his country worships him in a way he doesn’t necessarily deserve. It surprises her for a moment because it means he must pay attention to news of the Avengers outside of America and… well she didn’t think that’d be something he’d do. She’s made a lot of assumptions and it hasn’t seemed to go well.

“He’s not really that great,” Wanda says and Peter looks offended enough to make her laugh. “What? He’s just a man. And he’s so short, I’m taller.”

“He can’t help being like that, its just how he is!” Peter says in Tony’s defense and Wanda snorts.

“I know that, but he’s always tall in magazines and they must stick him on apple boxes or something because there’s no way he’s taller than Pepper Potts. Also he tried to recruit me to the Avengers,” she adds. She shouldn’t be surprised when, as Ned would put it, Peter flips his entire fuck but she still doesn’t expect him to flail every limb he has and yell _what_ loud enough that the staff and patrons all look over at them.

Peter winces sheepishly, “sorry!” he calls before turning back to her. “Oh my god you have to do it then get them to recruit me, I’ve always wanted to be an Avenger after that time I almost died at Stark Expo and Tony saved my life,” he says, vibrating with excitement.

Wanda frowns a little as the memory flies through Peter’s head at top speeds- him being in front of that robot thing, lifting his hand like he’s seen Iron Man do a million times on TV right before _actual_ Iron Man lands right beside him and blasts the thing away. What surprises Wanda the most though is that Tony takes the time to turn to Peter and say ‘good job kid’ before he takes back off into the sky. Peter remembers it fondly but for Wanda it’s a side of Stark she hasn’t ever seen and didn’t think existed. Its sweet that he gave Peter the credit for his work, just a small bit of encouragement before his aunt May showed up and ran off with him, scolding him about wandering away in crowds and scaring the shit out of her.

“I don’t know if I want to take it,” she says though she knows that’s not exactly true. Peter’s reaction to the Avengers is not one she anticipated and that’s because overseas they don’t have a good reputation. If they’re going to claim that they’re some kind of international super force they should probably consider what happens outside of America. She has that knowledge and in a way that’s more specialized than most.

Peter flails again, causing her to shake her head. “Oh my god, you can’t just _throw_ that away! That’s like… my _dream_ job!”

His dream job is actually a photographer for a newspaper because Peter is much more relaxed than his arachnid alter ego but still. “In… in my country the Avengers aren’t much of a symbol of hope. I don’t have the faith in them that you do.” She doesn’t have the same experiences with them that he does either and it makes all the difference.

“What do you mean? They saved the world. Like a few times,” Peter points out.

She nods, “theoretically, yes. But no one else would have reacted well to Loki’s invasion and its not like their the only people with abilities out there. Plus they landed over America specifically- we would have had time to plan for what happened if they failed. If American media has taught me anything its that humans are not an easy species to beat down.” Real life has taught her something similar in the most unfortunate of ways. There will always be someone trying to stop the bad things in the world, the Avengers are not special in that regard however exceptional they may be.

“I know they’ve done their good, especially in New York. But they also spent two years tearing through half the world’s countries because Captain America was sad he lost his best friend. That caused a lot of damage, most of which was unnecessary, and _every_ time they went over a boarder it was illegal. It’s shocking behavior coming from a country that screams about illegal boarder crossings being the equivalent to an apocalypse or _worse_. It shows a level of mismanagement and abuse of power that I’m not comfortable with,” she says, shaking her head.

Peter considers this for a moment before speaking, “you should probably tell them that but you’re right. If someone other country did that America would probably bomb the shit out of them. I mean… we’ve bombed people for less and apparently Canada is a threat to national security because of the war of 1812 so you know. That’s a good point. Tell them that and also get them to recruit me, that’s still my dream job,” Peter says and Wanda snorts.

“How am I supposed to do that? Say ‘hi, this is my friend who’s named after a spider but doesn’t even do anything spider-like so you might as well call him sticky boy because that’s more accurate’? I think they might laugh. You would get along well with Tony though,” she adds when Peter looks a little dismayed.

He perks up, “really?” he asks.

She nods. “You have similar philosophies,” she says, thinking about how Peter’s speech about abusing his power by not using it to help others reminds her of Tony’s recruitment speech.

*

Bucky is fucking _pissed_ , which is honestly a total nuisance to Tony even if Charles seems to have calmed him some. Steve seems more relaxed with this and Tony finds that rude until he says that this is the usual level of stubbornness Bucky has now that he’s decided to refuse to speak to Tony until he gets therapy. Then he feels a little bad for misjudging him. That’s a whole new level of weird, Steve’s being nice, but Wanda put forth a theory that her heightening their hatred towards each other made their actual personalities far less repugnant to deal with. He has no idea if she’s right, but she does have a lot of interesting opinions that lead to a lot of arguments with Steve and Tony is _enthused_ to learn Sokovian swear words. Natasha always breaks out the popcorn too and Clint actually was pretty pissed to miss the talk of vibranium hats and how he has a dog? Tony doesn’t know, guy lives a weird life.

“I still think this is a bad idea, by the way,” Bucky tells him and Tony grins.

“Breaking your vow of silence, are we?” he asks and Bucky narrows his eyes at him. At least he _makes_ eye contact now. Frankly that trait drove Tony _nuts_ before but what the hell was he supposed to do about it? He figured, correctly, that Bucky would grow out of it as he got more stable mentally.

“No because I’ve been reliably informed that you’ve been gone all morning because you saw a shrink. Lets not act like you’re winning here,” Bucky tells him, hands on his hips. “Wanda is a bad idea,” he tells Tony, going back to his original subject.

Tony sighs, “so far I think she’s been invaluable to international relations- her presence is something we can’t afford to give up. Plus I like that she annoys the fuck out of Steve,” he adds. By now Wanda’s Captain America imitations are dead on and Tony has several moodboards of Wanda’s impressions to send to Peter. Bright kid, a little over excitable, but bright.

“Well I _don’t_ like that time she tried to kill you,” Bucky says, arms folded across his chest.

Yeah, neither does Tony but it happened so now they need to move on. “Honey I know, but she’s past that and her perspective and power really is invaluable. She does have very strict restrictions to stay the hell away from you though. Steve, Natasha, and I all thought that was necessary.” Bucky is doing well, very well, and now that Wanda isn’t making Steve next level paranoid about Bucky taking an interest in anything that isn’t him he’s got a little extra support. And, against all odds, he’s pretty decent friends with Charles and now the two spend a lot of time together doing whatever it is they do.

Bucky makes an irritated noise, “guess that explains why she avoids me. I can tell her to fuck off on my own though, thanks,” he adds.

“We all know that but we also figured you wouldn’t really want her near you to tell her that either so.” It seemed like a good trade off to him at least.

Bucky looks grumpy about it but accepts it. “I don’t want her to hurt you,” he says finally, looking away.

Tony smiles a little, pleased by the warm feeling in his chest at that. “Come here,” he says to Bucky, not entirely sure what to expect. He goes to Tony quickly though and falls to his knees, pressing his forehead to Tony’s thigh for a moment before leaning forward and pulling the pillow Tony kept for Bucky out from under his desk and repositioning himself on it. “Good,” he murmurs to Bucky, “that’s so good.” Bucky leans back into him and Tony runs his fingers through his long hair, carefully detangling the strands.

_Deleted Scenes: Scene One_

Steve and Wanda are arguing again so Tony and Bucky had taken the opportunity to sneak off, leaving Natasha and Clint with the popcorn. Steve has told them a half a dozen times that he doesn’t appreciate their treating his attempts to see Wanda’s point of view as a spectator sport but when they make it as interesting as one Tony feels they can’t be blamed for being entertained. ‘Course Bucky has a much better idea as far as entertainment goes and Tony is _way_ more happy to indulge in his form of entertainment than Steve and Wanda bickering again.

Or at least he would be if Steve wasn’t in his fucking doorway asking questions about international diplomacy. Tony opens his mouth to point out this isn’t an opportune moment if Bucky tied to the bed wasn’t a good indication but its Bucky that speaks up.

“Steve, if you don’t get the fuck out of here in ten seconds or less I will never speak to you again,” he snarls. Tony raises and eyebrow and Steve looks just as surprised.

“Why?” he asks because apparently his eyeballs are not a set of body parts that are working at the moment.

“Because I am in the process of trying to get laid. It has been nearly eighty god damn years, _let a man live_ ,” Bucky tells him, glaring at Steve with purpose.

Finally his position seems to clue Steve in and he wrinkles his entire face in disgust, “oh my god, ew. I can’t believe- this is- no, _no_! This is the worst moment of my life,” he mumbles, fleeing the scene mumbling about brothers and sex lives.

“Could you at least close the door, you damn animal? Were you raised in the fucking jungle?” Tony calls after him. Steve doesn’t respond, presumably whining at Natasha about this while Clint cackles.

“I don’t even care if the door is open at this point,” Bucky tells him and Tony raises an eyebrow because an exhibitionist Bucky is not.

He considers it, looking at the door and weighing the pros and cons. “Wanda is a child,” he says finally, deciding that adults happening across them, whatever, but Wanda? Probably not good psudoparenting and he already killed her parents; he probably used all his fuck ups in one go there.

_Scene Two_

The kids love memes and sure, they’re funny and Tony will freely admit that unlike Steve, who laughs in secret. But when they’re in the middle of a god damn battle and they start referencing memes its not funny its distracting and Natasha only encourages it. “Kids, please focus on the Doombots. New York is being attacked so your ‘I guess I’ll die’ jokes are not funny,” he tells them, flying above the streets to try and figure out the best course of action. Steve’s got a plan obviously but since he’s got the best position to survey the bots movements he’s charged with changing it as needed with input from Natasha. Only she’s fucking useless right now because she’s making meme jokes too.

“Let the kids have their fun,” Nat tells him over the coms and Tony sighs.

“They have their fun all the time, but in the middle of a damn battle is not a good time,” he tells her.

“Oh my god they’re coming out of the sewer. Peter, you’re the closest go punch the literally shitty Doombots,” Riri says over the coms. She appears in the air a few streets over sporting her own version of an Iron Man suit and waves at Tony before she flies off to another section of the city. She’s in charge of making sure the Doombots don’t go outside the perimeter they set when they evacuated this part of the city.

“Oh gross, she wasn’t lying,” Wanda says. “Peter come here,” she adds.

Peter responds that he’ll be right there and Tony spies an open manhole and flies into it, nearly hitting the ground headfirst when he gets down the hole. First of all that was a tight squeeze and also he didn’t expect the ground to be _right_ there. He looks around, trying to see if he can find any bots in this part of the system because he really, _really_ doesn’t want Doombots fucking up the sewer systems.

“This bitch empty,” Wanda says and Tony’s head snaps up.

“Wanda, I don’t know what you’re about to throw but you better put it down right-” his rant is interrupted by Wanda yelling ‘yeet’ and Peter screaming bloody murder. He promptly flies back out of the sewers.

_Scene Three_

The notes are all detailed and, in their own way, pretty impressive so Tony kind of regrets he has to break the news to Wanda. “Looks like you did a decent job documenting the affects of the stone and some of the stone’s properties,” he says. Wanda looks pleased with herself until Tony tosses her journal in the trash by his desk. “Sorry, but you’re going to have to repeat every experiment you ran only this time with proper lab conditions and multiple tests to ensure the results are repeatable.”

Wanda’s shoulders slump, “that was almost two years worth of experiments,” she says sadly.

Peter perks up, perched by Dummy’s charging base. Honestly the bot is offensive to the eye and to advancements in technology but he can’t bring himself to get rid of the bot. At least Peter loves the bots as much as he does.

“This time you have me to help you!” Peter says excitedly. Wanda shoots Tony a ‘help me’ look and he laughs, especially when Wanda’s worry seems to go over Peter’s head.

_Scene Four_

Steve and Bucky frown at the teenagers that have taken over the living room. “I think we should tell Tony or maybe whoever his psychologist is that collecting children is not a viable coping mechanism for your PTSD,” Steve says. Because Tony has been diagnosed with a big ass dose of that and then a few other things too. Bucky isn’t really looking forward to his own assessment.

“We should tell Charles too, he also has a whole bunch of them. Do you think they got the idea from each other?” he asks.

Steve sighs, “I don’t really care who got it from who. If I have to have one more teenager explain another word to me that I don’t understand and it ends up being some new weird sex thing I might die. Being called ‘daddy’ on Twitter was unsettling, learning the definition of ‘vore’ made me wish I had stayed in the ice.”

Bucky nods, “I kinda wish HYDRA would fry that out of my brain, I don’t need that memory. Or the memory of what a furry is _or_ that T’Challa is basically a furry. A super furry. Their conspiracy theories are fun though.” He has learned that people don’t believe in the moon and Tony gets very upset when the theories are extremely unscientific so Bucky goes out of his way to find as many as he can, naturally, to piss Tony off.

He loves Tony dearly, but he loves his long rants about how the soul is not a quantifiable thing to steal via the chakras with alien technology more. Or even better, his rants about how vaccines can’t steal souls because, again, they aren’t quantifiable things to steal. He’s ninety percent sure Tony almost threw him off a building when Bucky told him about the water turning people gay. ‘Course if that’s true the gay water has been around for a long time considering damn near everyone Bucky ever spent time with was some kind of queer not that the larger public knew that obviously.

Steve lets out a small sigh, looking a little dead inside. “Bucky the conspiracies about Wakanda being an advanced race of aliens are not fun, please stop reading that stuff. I think it might kill Tony,” Steve adds for good measure.

“Before Wanda whipping Peter full force at Doombots does?” he asks skeptically.

“Alright,” Steve amends, “the kids reenacting the memes will probably kill him first, then all those absurd theories you find online like me being a secret lizard person brought to life in a Steve Rogers body to spread the New World Order propaganda.” Bucky throws back his head and laughs because that was downright hilarious. “Stop laughing Buck, I don’t even know what the New World Order is and lizard people aren’t real, I asked Tony.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, “he answered that?” he asks because he hadn’t answered Bucky when he asked.

Steve shakes his head, “no, but the look on his face was enough to tell me what the answer was. In my defense I have seen crazier things than lizard people,” he says.

Bucky grins, “ever find that conspiracy that Loki was actually trying to liberate us from our mind control overlords and was going to be our benevolent leader before the Avengers, a government controlled machine of world destruction, actually ensured he lost the battle so the government can keep its slave force? Tony kicked me out of bed for that one.”

“I’m tempted to kick you out of the _house_ for that. Seriously?” Steve asks, shaking his head. “Disrespectful,” he mumbles.

“I don’t know, I think the one where you were a Nazi all along actually is more offensive,” Bucky says, shrugging. Steve gives him a disgusted look that would inform anyone that he is at no risk, nor was he ever at risk, for being a Nazi but sadly the conspiracy theorists can’t see it. “If it makes you feel better pretty much everyone dismissed Nick Spencer immediately,” he adds. It doesn’t seem to make Steve feel better at all though he supposes if he found out someone thought he was a Nazi he wouldn’t be happy either. That might be because of his Jewish background though.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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